US: newsroom job cuts continue

Posted by John Burke on November 2, 2005 at 12:38 PM

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has announced that 130 employees, about 10% of its workforce, will be leaving the paper on an early retirement offer. The deal includes 40 newsroom workers which journalism professor Ed Bishop says will cause a loss of "institutional memory."

The paper was part of the USD 1.46 billion Lee Enterprises Inc. paid in June when it acquired Pulitzer Inc. and its subsidiaries. Lee expects to save USD 7 million a year after the cuts.

Publisher Terrance C.Z. Egger said, "There's an uneven local advertising environment right now, which we have to deal with, but we've seen these things before. The real headline is that our business model is shifting a bit and we have to adjust with it."

Source: Forbes

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