Results matching “to cut 500 jobs”

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is examining the latest "false-report" story that has emerged from new media. iReport, a citizen journalism platform on CNN, reported last week that Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, suffered a heart attack on Friday. Job is viewed as central to Apple's success and the story resulted in Apple's shares nose-diving 9%.

CNN's Jennifer Martin reported that SEC investigators have contacted the respected broadcaster for details on who is behind the false-story. CNN are reportedly launching their own investigation into the affair. iReport is a platform The CNN-owned site is dedicated to hosting news submitted by members of the public. Martin said that it clearly says on the site that most stories are not edited, filtered, or vetted.

CNET report that rumours are circulating that the story may have been posted to manipulate the stock market.

In order to submit a story on iReport, a person need only submit an e-mail address.

The story has raised questions about citizen journalism and new media in general, the reaction the story caused in the financial markets highlights the impact that these stories has. Is it time the platform ccame under tighter regulation?

Source: CNET and Reuters

See also:

US: United Airlines stock plummets after old bankruptcy story re-surfaces

A number of US newspapers have submitted cancellation notices to the Associated Press (AP), announcing that they are dropping their contracts with the news service. Reasons range from the recent changes that the AP has made to its fee structure to its diversion from regional news. The Wenatchee World of Wenatchee, Washington, The Yakima Herald-Republic of Yakima, Washington, The Spokesman Review of in Spokane, Washington and The Post Register of Idaho Falls, Idaho, spoke to the Editors Weblog about their decision to cut back on AP content and future plans that they have.

The AP's new fee structure

The new pricing structure, approved by AP's board last year, includes state, national and international breaking news and allows newspapers to buy individual articles and other services, as opposed to its old structure of one bulk membership fee. The AP claims this will cause fee increases for only 10% of its subscribers,

But the Post Register's editor and publisher Roger Plothow refers to the new fee structure as "too rigid" and "too expensive", pointing out that the AP hasn't adapted too well to the changing newspaper industry.

Spokesman-Review editor Steve Smith mentions that he had to lay off 16 of the papers staff in December 2007 and choosing to unsubscribe from the AP ("even considering the cost of replacement services") would save the paper nearly USD$300,000 and permit it to keep 10 to 15 jobs.

"The AP's declining content contribution?" or "Focus on Local News"
 
"They do far less for us than ever before. This year, we would have had to pay extra for basic Olympics coverage once included in the basic rate. And the AP staff in Olympia, the state capitol, told us they were unable to provide statewide coverage of last month's primary election. That is simply not acceptable, not considering how much we pay," says Smith.
 
The Wenatchee World, apart from financial concerns, dropped the AP for similar reasons. It wishes to pay more attention to regional news and the AP's regional reports have "gone by the wayside," says the paper's editor and publisher Rufus Woods.
 
"We've started a free story-sharing service with other papers in our region to enhance our regional report. We do it for free and it works great for everyone," says Woods.
 
"I believe that successful news organizations are gonna be the ones that will have the strongest local content and the challenge for us is that it's more expensive to provide local content than anything else," says Jenkins.
 
Plothow predicts that smaller and medium-sized regional papers will rely less on the AP for content since most of it may be obtained through other sources or be less relevant to readers of papers like the Register. He says that in two years time, the Register will be 80-90% regional and local, with only the most important national and international news articles.

"We will take our savings and invest it into local reporting resources. For newspapers like ours, local is the only future," says Plothow.

Smith reflects a similar idea: that while his paper has international and national coverage, its focus is primarily on local and regional events. For this, the Review cannot rely on the AP, he says. Perhaps it is due to the news outlet's job cuts or the "restructuring and emphasis online and in multi-media." He also mentions that dropping the AP's online service, like audio and broadcast coverage, made no change to the Review's site traffic.

"The big question is what kind of news report resonates with readers. Given changing reader habits, it may be that an all-local paper is in our future. Or perhaps just a slimmed-down national/international report," says Woods.

Newspapers defecting to AP competitors?

The Register is replacing the AP with other services such as Thomson Reuters, the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times-The Washington Post, European Pressphoto Agency, sports providers like PA Sports Ticker and a  "reconfigured coalition of regional newspapers that share content," according to Plothow.

The Review is adapting a similar technique. It may also make use of McClatchy-Tribune's proposed network that would be set up "under their auspices" and would pay the paper for any Review content that it would use.

Tim Brettingen, the AP's chief revenue officer, said that an AP contract is "one of the great bargains in the industry," in an interview with PaidContent.org.

But Spokesman Review's Smith countered that opinion, saying, "Frankly, I think it's highway robbery. And obviously, I am not alone. I have heard from several dozen editors who have dropped or soon will drop the service for most of the same reasons. Most of the major papers in our region are opting out."
 
Jenkins says that submitting a two-year cancellation notice gives the paper time to look at alternatives "that are available now" and those that "are being developed".

"When you look back two years, so many more sources would have become available in that period that it's hard to tell what will be available two years from now," Jenkins adds.

The effects of AP's pricing structure on the US newspaper industry

"The industry's going through dramatic change and we have to be open to radically new ways of doing business to stay in business. AP assumes they are a necessity but more newspapers are viewing it as a luxury and are weary of the "corporate" approach of the organization. If AP wants to partner with members in this evolution, great. If not, so be it," Woods says.
 
Smith, referring to the way in which the American media landscape is evolving, said "If more regional papers begin to share their content between themselves (as has begun in South Florida), the change to our industry will be seismic. AP has been the backbone service for more than 100 years. That could change in the next few years with AP becoming less of a provider and more of a competitor in the race to survive the new information revolution." He continued, " The mere fact that once competing news organizations -- The Miami Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Palm Beach Post for one example; a growing Northwest coalition for another -- will now collaborate signals a huge and unprecedented shift in the news landscape. And any sort of mass shift is going to boost the growth of fledgling content providers such as PA/SportsTicker. There will be some entrepreneurs who will make their fortunes with these changes. And new partnerships will grow between unlikely parties such as CNN and MLB.com."
 
The Post Register's Plothow predicted, "The AP will likely become a service for large newspapers. In the U.S. 1,200 of the 1,400 daily newspapers are under 50,000 circulation - these are the papers that will begin leaving the AP en masse over the next year or so." He concluded, "This will likely only improve local journalism, and national and international journalism is rapidly moving onto the Web. Whether that's a good thing remains to be seen."

Circulation:

Wenatchee World: 22,579 daily, 24,414 Sunday
Yakima Herald-Republic: 38,000 daily
Spokesman Review: 89,000 daily, 113,000 Sunday
Post Register: 25,500
(last audit, June 2005)

Trinity Mirror is closing seven local papers and nine satellite offices in North Wales and the North West of England. The action puts 30 jobs at risk.

This summer Trinity warned that advertising revenues were faster than at any point in the last two decades. Trinity said at the time that it was looking to find £20m of additional cost savings by next year.

The three weekly titles set to close a in North Wales include the paid-for Abergele Visitor, and free papers the Rhyl and Prestatyn Visitor and Your Vale. Trinity will replace them with free weekly title, the Denbighshire Visitor. Advertising-led title the Flintshire BuySell will also close.

In Lancashire, the Midweek Advertiser and Huyton & Roby Star (both free weeklies) will close, while the paid-for Formby Times will be relaunched as a free title.

Two local editions of the free weekly Wirral News will also be closed.

Earlier this year, Trinity closed eight papers in Derby and Peterborough and in August it announced plans to relaunch the Birmingham Post broadsheet as a compact paper in the autumn.

Source: Brand Republic

French newspaper, Le Monde, has completed construction of a new television studio on the 5th floor of their building, permitting journalists to post articles and interviews in video format on their website.     

Le Monde is also set to launch two new pages on their website.  The two pages will replace pre-existing pages and will be titled "Planète" - covering subjects such as economy, international affairs, ecology and science. Further changes for Le Monde include a plan to cut 130 jobs by March 2009 as a means to drastically cut their budget.    

Edited by Lauren Drablier

Sources: AP, TF1.fr, Lycos,  AFP, Fox News

A local newspaper in Ireland is taking up the freesheet model. From next Friday The Offaly Independent in Tullamore will no longer be available at newsagents and will instead 15,000 copies will be distributed free of charge throughout homes and supermarkets in Offaly.

This is the latest in a series of changes at the Celtic Media title, The Offaly Independent changed its publication day from Wednesdays to Fridays, and it previously began distributing free copies to the newer areas of the county in an effort to boost circulation figures.

The launch of the new full-colour 48-page Offaly Independent will include a revamp of the paper's website.

The move is due to a restructuring within the company and will result in the loss of two full-time jobs following internal deployments elsewhere.

Celtic Media also publishes the Westmeath Independent, the Westmeath Examiner, the Meath Chronicle in Navan and the Anglo Celt in Cavan. It employs a total of 200 people.

Source: Greenslade in the Guardian.co.uk and Sunday Tribune

Mark Potts, of the Recovering Journalist blog, has recently tried to put a total on the severity of recent cut backs in the newspaper industry. "Over the past few days, I've built a database of the cuts over the past year at the nation's 100 largest newspapers."

Some key findings:

-Some 6,300 employees at the 100 largest newspapers have lost jobs in the last year (and more than half of these cut backs have come since the beginning of June)

-Nearly two-thirds of the top 100 papers have cut staff in the last year, including all but four of the top 34.

-28 of the top 100 have cut more than 100 jobs, 7 have cut more than 200 (in the past year)

-Virtually all cuts have been to the print side of papers. Few, if any, have cut online staffers

Potts collected his (admittedly, unscientific) data through Romenesko posts. If you want to "see the gory details" - as he calls them - a PDF of the data is downloadable from Recovering Journalist.

Source: Recovering Journalist

Rumours have been circulating for several weeks about the Press Gazette's future: that it could go monthly, change its size to A4, or concentrate on big interviews and features and leave the news for its website.

However, it has emerged that the weekly magazine's management could take more drastic action and close its print version completely. The owners, Wilmington Media,  have said that several plans are being considered and this is just one of them.

A meeting was held on Monday between the owner and the staff to discuss the different options, and the "discussions are continuing" according to a Wilmington Media source. The magazine has entered a negotiation period as of the seven editorial and five commercial staff could lose their jobs.

Wilmington Media bought the 43-year-old weekly magazine in December 2006 and is reportedly in talks to sell the title to private equity group HgCapital.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Journalists going to Beijing for the Olympics have just learned that China intends to censor internet access at the Olympic venues as they do in the rest of the country. And, in the run-up to the Olympics, China has time and again reneged on its promises to allow free reporting.

Journalists trying to do their jobs in China are not the only people concerned -- in recent weeks, some 3,500 newspaper readers have written to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao calling for the release of all jailed journalists in China.

Those readers were responding to public service advertisements from the World Association of Newspapers, published in newspapers in 20 countries, drawing attention to China's failure to honour its Olympic promises.

Something to think about as you watch the Olympics this summer: China is the world's biggest jailer of journalists, with 30 journalists and 50 cyber-dissidents behind bars.

Source: WAN

Journalists at Telegraph Media Group are heading for a dispute with management over new working conditions at the media group.

The problems centre around plans to create 40 new full-time positions. National Union of Journalists (NUJ) members are concerned about the axing of casual staff which is also being implemented.

Many of the casual workers will not be offered new full- or part-time jobs - and currently those who have been regular freelances for a year or more are not expected to be offered redundancy pay-offs.

Executive director editorial Richard Ellis, who is negotiating with the union, has said in a letter to casuals that it would be "advisable for those applying for jobs with us to take steps to seek work at other establishments".

The paper's NUJ chapel has also questioned plans to scrap the nine-day fortnight - and make it 10 days - for 65 production journalists in exchange for a one-off payment of £2,000.

Source: Press Gazette

In a memo from Publisher Timothy Kennedy, staffers at the Allentown Morning-Call learned that at least three dozen jobs will be lost at the paper, the paper's Quakertown and Lehighton bureaus will be closed and a major redesign is coming on Sunday.

"I am writing today to update you on the status of the redesign and resizing of our paper," wrote Kennedy. "The new design will debut on Monday, July 28th... Beginning today you will be able to see prototypes displayed...on the second floor in the newsroom... We should all be proud of the creativity and energy...involved in this effort.

"In addition to the redesign, we also plan to resize the newspaper... The planned reductions in newsroom labor and newsprint are a required response to the punishing economics that we face... Cash flow was down 27% on an 11% decrease in revenues."

Changes, the publisher noted, will include new editorial zoning, partly to accommodate consolidation among the bureaus, as well as the elimination of 35 to 40 newsroom positions. Affected employees will be notified this weekend and will receive one week of pay for every 6 months of service.

"These changes are painful," Kennedy concluded. "As we move forward with this plan, we will treat our employees thoughtfully and respectfully. Unfortunately, these are actions that I have reluctantly concluded we need to take."

Source: Editor & Publisher

Dubbed "the Midsummer Massacre," in the past two months nearly 4,000 jobs have been lost in the US newspaper industry.

Whether Honolulu or Hollywood, Washington or Wall Street, layoffs are sweeping newsrooms across the country.

The Washington Post has cut newsroom staff by more than 12 per cent of the total - more than 100 jobs. USA Today cut 50 jobs, the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News laid off 150. The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch's latest acquisition, is cutting 50 jobs to consolidate news and feature departments.

Even the New York Times has not escaped. It's estimated the company will cut around 100 newsroom positions by the end of the year.

Small papers have also suffered. At the Honolulu Advertiser last week 54 of the staff were laid off and the Hartford Courant and Orlando Sentinel saw 57 and 50 job losses, respectively.

At some papers the job cuts have led to protest. "At the Baltimore Sun - where 100 employees have been laid off - some staff took to the streets in protest, wearing black clothing as they marched outside the paper's offices," reported Press Gazette.

Source: pressgazette.co.uk

According to an internal memo, more than 300 Palm Beach Post employees are taking buyouts from the company, a staggering loss in the newsroom.

Though the newspaper initially announced it would cut 300 jobs from the 1,350 person payroll, there will be additional layoffs. According to the memo:

"The number of applications was more than expected. However, we received too many in some areas and not enough in others, So we still expect to begin a small number of involuntary separations, or layoffs, the week of Aug. 18 in some departments as needed. Thanks to all who applied. You have greatly reduced the number of involuntary separations needed. Your contribution to PBNI over the years and your dedication and patience during these recent difficult times is greatly appreciated."

 Source: The Daily Pulp

Ryan Thornburg, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill's School of Journalism and Mass Communication and former editor at washingtonpost.com, recently completed a survey of what journalists consider the most important skills set to have - and finds that tradition trumps.

Thornburg reports "news judgment and the ability to work under time pressure are the concepts that are most important to their jobs, while community management is far and away the least important of the 10 choices I gave them."

Source: Cyberjournalist.net

Telegraph Media Group (TMG) intends to shift its editorial staff from a nine day to a 10-day working fortnight by substituting freelance positions with 40 new editorial ones.

"TMG has made fantastic progress with our integration process and it is because of this we are able to recruit for 40 new roles. By accelerating our change programme we believe we will be stronger in this difficult economic climate," said TMG's editor-in-chief, Will Lewis.

The new posts would be filled after the summer, including both full-time and part-time employees.

£2,000 will be offered to the freelance journalists that are most affected, largely from the production sector.

Although the creation of jobs may be seen as a good thing, freelance journalists might worry about their future while permanent journalists might be concerned about their work schedules.

Source: Guardian.co.uk