Posted on 09/18/2009 6:46:55 AM PDT by abb
The Northern California Media Workers Guild said late Wednesday that five members of the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial department are being laid off, the latest in a series of staffing cuts at the troubled daily newspaper.
The Guild didn’t indicate which editorial staffers were losing their jobs.
Five staffers in the Chronicle’s classified advertising department, four of them Guild members, agreed to job buyouts last week, according to the union, and “at least one voluntary layoff has been accepted in editorial, the Guild said.
That would mean at least 11 jobs have been eliminated this month, after earlier rounds of cuts this year slashed roughly 150 Guild job between March and mid-May.
“Company managers told Guild officers that no additional ‘journalist’ positions are being cut for now, but did not rule out the possibility of additional layoffs in non-news departments,” the Sept. 16 Guild statement said.
The Chronicle’s marketing director and spokesman, Michael Keith, could not immediately be reached for comment. In the past, Keith has said the company doesn’t comment on personnel matters.
The union noted Thursday that Hearst Corp., owner of the Chronicle, threatened to close the paper earlier this year before reaching agreements with the Guild and Teamsters designed to help bring costs into line with shrinking revenues.
“One of the key agreements was an increase in severance to as much as a year’s pay, plus health benefits, for anyone involuntarily losing his or her job,” the statement said.
Earlier this month, the Guild said that further cuts were expected after Labor Day.
Hearst said in late February it would shut or sell the paper “within weeks” without significant concessions from the Guild and Local 853 of the Teamsters, which in April agreed to shed up to 100 jobs.
The Guild now represents about 310 remaining editorial and business-side workers at the Chronicle, Guild rep Carl Hall told the San Francisco Business Times.
The paper’s operating losses for the year are running at more than $1 million a week, including some costs related to the workforce reductions already implemented, the Guild said in late August. Hearst and the Chronicle have used the same $1 million per week number for at least a couple of years to describe continuing losses at the paper, which was once the dominant daily newspaper not only in San Francisco but in the Bay Area and much of Northern California.
Hall said there’s no sign that management has a specific plan to staunch the staff cuts or implement a forward-thinking strategy for the troubled daily. “It’s disheartening to see layoffs without a plan guiding them,” he said.
Email Chris Rauber at crauber@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4946
ping
“The paper’s operating losses for the year are running at more than $1 million a week,....”
That capitalism accounting thing is tough on commie scum.
We've been calling them 'journalists' for years: it's great that they've finally caught up.
five members of the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial department are being laid off
Hey, more people finding out what their support for hope and change got them!
On their resume I recommend they list this experience as “continuing education”.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE58G65M20090917
Google CEO questions Murdoch’s online pay plan
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/dick_parsons_may_help_providence_RbOmMhmHhAKCWgJtC8AKWP
Dick Parsons may help Providence ditch MGM
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125322915767921233.html
Media Rules Complicate Restructurings
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-tribune-creditors-zell-sep18,0,363726.story
Tribune Co. creditors plan to join forces to investigate possible ‘fraudulent conveyance’
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/75588.html
Commentary: Journalism’s tough public-relations problem
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2009/sep/18/news-crisis-radical-solution
TV news crisis needs a radical solution
What are they even needed for??? They just take the obama talking points for the day and reprint them with a little packaging...
and the Guild will still demand they pay dues.
http://www.magazinedeathpool.com/
Marked for death: The Hollywood Reporter
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=113712
Smooth Failing: Newspapers To Sink Through 2010
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=113727
AT&T, Verizon Tout Telco TV Growth
(I fully realize that all sensible, thinking Americans — that’d be conservatives and members of FR —fully understand this information. I post it only for the brain-dead Obama voters and statists — that’d be liberals — who might have slipped out of their rubber rooms over at DU and are lurking, hacking or generally causing trouble here at FR.)
Recently, I read what probably amounts to the obituary for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. (My wife insists on buying the Sunday edition for the TV guide.) It joins the growing list of print newspapers in deep, deep financial trouble. The LA Times, NY Times, Boston Globe, Cleveland Plain Dealer, etc.
Here’s my horseback analysis of why they’re heading for extinction.
As generally liberal statist propaganda outlets, they have for decades supported a government “education” system (and I used the term very loosely) dominated by the NEA and the idiot bureaucrats running the DOE in Washington. The unions and the NEA have largely hurled the traditional three “Rs” and critical thinking skills under the bus in favor of touchy-feely diversity training, self-esteem building, political correctness, African studies, teaching Hispanic kids in SPANISH instead of teaching them English on day one, social promotions, basket weaving, navel gazing, etc., etc.
I won’t dwell on it here but would, instead, refer you to my personal experience with the government schools here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0lR1KQq2-U
What I cannot grasp is precisely why, after effectively dumbing down the members of the American populace who have traversed the conveyor belt of mediocrity called government schools, the overeducated owners and operators of these newspapers are surprised that this population has lost its interest in READING NEWSPAPERS: Many of them CAN’T read!!
Those folks – especially conservatives who resent the increasingly liberal drivel found in the major papers — who can and DO read things are now getting their information from the Internet or, for those too busy to actually read, from largely conservative talk radio (which helps explain why Algore, Pelosi, Reid, et al feel the need to control both these formats).
Their statist dumbing down has produced huge numbers of voters who lacked the critical thinking skills necessary to determine that their present-voting, slick-talking liar of a candidate had virtually NO management or legislative experience. And the economic illiterates they have elevated to high office in Washington for years have produced a growing economic crisis which has even those with any money left spending it on “luxuries” like food, clothing and shelter. Newspapers and advertising therein are far down the list.
And did I mention that the economic collapse Obama “inherited” has its genesis in Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act? It was then expanded by Clinton and stridently defended by Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters and Barney Frank (who was sleeping with Herb Moses while he held a top spot at – appropriately – Fannie). Only government could turn the dream of home ownership for poor folks into a NIGHTMARE for the rest of us.
Now that they have control of the White House and both houses of Congress, the liberals who run most of the newspapers here SHOULD be on a beach somewhere throwing a huge party. Instead, they are dusting off their resumes. The Editor of the AJC informed us that she was actively seeking to get more conservative/traditional values writers in the pages down there. I’d submit that it’s too little, too late!
Perhaps she’ll write and let us know if that “Hope” and “Change We Can Believe In” thing helps with the job search.
If you just have to have one of those 1,000 new jobs dunning folks for Tim Geithner’s IRS, it couldn’t hurt.
They don’t get fired like you or me.
They get “job buyouts”!!!
BWWWWHAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
Then strike, meat-head. :o)
They need to dump idiots like Mark Morford, Joe Garafoli, Carla Marinnuci and the rest of the Obamabots that have ruined a once reputable newspaper.
Herb Caen is probably crying over what the Chron has become.
http://community.naa.org/blogs/circulation/archive/2009/09/17/the-one-dollar-single-copy-price-is-becoming-more-common.aspx
Circulation: Marketing to Readers
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/09/the-great-debate-on-micropayments-and-paid-content-part-1260.html
The Great Debate on Micropayments and Paid Content, Part 1
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/144560
Freedom seeks approval to hire broker for possible sale of Tribune
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2009/09/media_matters_glenn_beck_and_t.html
Glenn Beck, Time and Media Matters [Updated]
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909180014
WaPo reporter and “close friend” of Von Drehle defends Beck profile; attacks me
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004013728
Moody’s Downgrades GateHouse, Raises Specter of Bankruptcy
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004013997
AbitibiBowater Cutbacks Include Newsprint at Three Mills
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004014096
Journos Losing Jobs at Three Times Rate of Average Workers
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004014063
J.P. Morgan Analysts: Beware of Newspaper Rallies, Ad Revenue Could Fall 25% in Q3
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004014105
‘Tampa Trib’ Parent Orders New Furloughs, Totaling Three Work Weeks in 2009
http://newsinnovation.com/
Is journalism an industry?
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/09/the_journalism.html
The Journalism Job Market: Part I, Looking Back
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