Archive for the ‘Media job cuts’ Category

The New York Times has announced plans to cut about 100 journalists — about 8 percent of its newsroom.

The bloodshed continues at Conde Nast,which axed Gourmet Oct. 5. The latest to take hits are Wired and Glamour. The New York Post quoted an unnamed insider as saying that the publisher has now cut 500 people.

The San Francisco Business Times is reporting that the San Francisco Chronicle, which is losing $1 million a week, has met with union officials to warn them of upcoming layoffs and buyouts.

Owner Hearst Corp. has been threatening since February to close the newspaper if it can’t find a buyer. The San Francisco Media Workers Guild said it was told layoffs could begin after labor day. San Francisco Business Times story.

Don’t be shocked if you see newspapers resume the depressing work of cutting heads and salaries in the next few weeks, especially as we near the end of the calendar and fiscal quarter. While some are actually printing with black ink, the recent profits are driven by cost cuts, not revenues. Even for the chains with the best earnings, revenues are continuing downward. And in that environment, the only way to keep going is to cut costs.

After lopping heads early in the year, newspapers turned to forced furloughs and pay cuts so that they can keep enough people to put out a decent product. They’re getting away with it, because reporters and editors have few options except to take their lumps. But there are signs we’ll see some more outright layoffs, as we saw yesterday, when the Register-Guard, in Eugene, Ore., cut 16 full-time staff, or 5.9 of the total, according to Editor & Publisher. (The Register-Guard cut 35 people a couple of months ago.)

Erica Smith’s Papercuts blog now counts 13,352 lost newspaper jobs since Jan. 1.

As we’ve been noting, three of the biggest newspaper chains have come in with strong earnings in the last few days. So how has it been reflected in their stock prices? Pretty well.

Here are the stock price changes since July 1:

• Media General +87%
• New York Times +18%
• McClatchy +90%

So what are these big earnings all about? Cost cuts, mainly. Advertising revenues are still down across the board, but the drastic staff cuts, forced furloughs and pay cuts have been effective. We could eventually find that a major key to that future “business model” I’ve been talking about is simply a lower cost structure.

McClatchy won’t go down without a fight. The media company, which owns the Sacramento Bee, the Miami Herald and more than two dozen other dailies, told shareholders that it’s restructuring its debt – exchanging $1.15 billion of debt securities privately for a combination of cash and new debt securities.

News accounts of the maneuvering have been fuzzy — financial reporters have never been very good at explaining what goes on in credit markets. But McClatchy seems to be doing the equivalent of accepting those new credit card offers we all used to get in the mail. It’ll borrow up to $175 million at a whopping 15.75%. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t follow broadcast nearly so much as print and web, so I completely missed the trend toward TV stations lengthening their newscasts even as they cut people. Fewer reporters covering more news and filling more time can’t possibly have a happy ending. Washington Post story.

Chicago Tribune cuts 11 percent of newsroom jobs | Reuters.com