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Perhaps it is time for the remaining Miami Herald employees to break out the Santeria rooster once again. Just three months after announcing job cutbacks in June, the Miami Herald has just announced that it is axing another 119 employees (emphasis mine): Three months after announcing plans to trim 250 jobs, the Miami Herald Media Co. said Tuesday it is cutting another 119 positions, or about 10 percent of the remaining workforce.Eighty full- and part-time employees will leave the company, while other, vacant jobs will be eliminated, Miami Herald President and Publisher David Landsberg said.

Miami Herald Publisher David Landsberg announced in an email to employees this afternoon that the newspaper is cutting 119 jobs in what amounts to the third round of buyouts, according to two newsroom sources. The cuts are being made across the McClatchy Company, which in total is slashing 1150 positions across the chain. Landsberg's explanation to employees, issued today at about 4:30 p.m., was dictated to the Pulp by one reporter. "Today we are announcing plans to reduce our worforce by 119 full-time equivalents, or about 10 percent of all employees," Landsberg wrote. "About 80 full-time and part-time employees will...

Washington Post Co. (WPO) Chief Executive Don Graham on Tuesday reported the sale of $2.9 million in company stock. According to a regulatory filing, 4,664 shares of Class B stock were sold through trusts of Graham's siblings. snip

"2008 Centennial/Dedication Schedule at a Glance" Thursday, Sept. 11...

NY Times Tale of the Investigative Tape: John Edwards: Ten months Sarah Palin: Five days The Grey Journalistic Bag LadyIt all boils down to what you're interested in investigating. ITEM: It took the New York Times ten months to muster the willpower to look into the John Edwards affair, scandal and ongoing cover-up. It took the Grey Shady only five days to swing into action on Sarah Palin. ITEM: Today, it was also reported that the NY Times lost another 30,000+ subscribers. Are the two items related? The Times' investigative sleuths better go back to Dirt Digging 101: the dirt...

<p>EXCLUSIVE: After weeks of checking out rumor after rumor, I'm finally able to pin down details of the long-overdue shakeup that's ahead for NBC when this fall's primetime schedule shapes up to be an unmitigated disaster. Someone has to shoulder the responsibility, and both Ben Silverman and the Reveille development exec he brought with him to NBC, Teri Weinberg, now deservedly have big fat targets on their foreheads. Staying in charge will be Marc Graboff and Katherine Pope who both have been trying to keep NBC up and running while Weinberg continually f***s up and Silverman regularly goes AWOL. For instance, last Thursday was Ben's first day in the office all month after attending the Beijing Olympics and guesting aboard Elisabeth Murdoch's yacht. (Elisabeth's Shine Group bought Ben's Reveille productions which put $60+ million directly into his pocket). But a pressing issue has been Silverman's partying ways, especially his excessive off-hours drinking and drug-taking, which has not only been visible to but also prompted complaints from Hollywood's TV community. "When he's around, he is totally engaged and focused and not in an altered state of consciousness. But that's when he's around. Literally, he has not been around from August 1st until August 28th, and you can't run a network programming group and not be around for the month of August," an insider tells me. So NBC is faced with two personnel problems simultaneously: Weinberg and Silverman.</p>

The Bee offered voluntary buyouts to the majority of its full-time employees today and hinted that another round of layoffs is possible as well. The buyouts represent the latest round of cost cutting at The Bee, which is facing a big slump in advertising revenue. Two months ago the newspaper eliminated 86 jobs as part of an across-the-board layoff ordered by its parent, The McClatchy Co. of Sacramento. McClatchy imposed a companywide wage freeze two weeks ago. But Bee executives said today they needed to make more cuts. The economic downturn has deepened and The Bee, like the rest of...

From: Kern, Gerould W. Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 1:02 PM To: zzCTC.ALLEDITORIAL Subject: Today's Chicago Tribune newsroom staff departures To the staff: Today is a difficult day in the Chicago Tribune newsroom as we are completing the second part of our reduction in force. Colleagues who are leaving today gave many years of service to this newspaper and forged lasting friendships and associations here. Endings are never easy. We thank them for their dedication and contributions to the success of the Chicago Tribune over their careers. We wish them only the best in the future. On July 25, Bob...

Updated at 11:44 a.m. ET on Aug. 14: The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., is among the first newspapers reporting layoffs on Thursday. Earlier: A Maryland publisher told employees late Wednesday afternoon that Gannett is eliminating 1,000 newspaper jobs, or about 3% of the troubled newspaper division's workforce -- and that about 600 employees are being laid off, a Gannett Blog reader says. The reader provided a copy of a memo that Daily Times Publisher Rick Jensen e-mailed about 4 p.m. today at the paper in Salisbury. "Across Gannett’s Community Publishing division, about 1,000 positions will be eliminated -- about 3%...

New York Times Co. shares slumped Tuesday after an analyst suggested in a media report that the company may need to cut its dividend to avoid a "junk" credit rating. The newspaper publisher's stock dropped 72 cents, or 5 percent, to $13.37 in afternoon trading. In the past year it has ranged from $12.08 to $22.95. Last year, the company raised its quarterly dividend 31 percent to 23 cents, which costs it more than $100 million a year in payments to shareholders. New York Times Co. has seen revenue contract in recent quarters, which crimps cash available for operations and...

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram announced Wednesday that several employees have been laid off and that there will be changes to the layout of the paper in an effort to cut costs. Out of about 400 employees, two union employees lost their jobs, as did an undisclosed number of managers, company officials said. The number of layoffs was far less than initially expected because of employees who volunteered to take time off without pay. "We were able to save a number of positions," said Charles Cochrane, president of Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc., which publishes the Press Herald/Telegram and two...

Eight months after becoming the only local daily in the city, Gannett Co.'s Cincinnati Enquirer is seeking to buy out 50 staffers. In an e-mail to employees Monday, Publisher Margaret Buchanan said the paper is looking to make the reductions among non-union employees. "If this voluntary offer doesn't result in a sufficient number of volunteers, or if in the future, economic conditions worsen, it may be necessary to consider layoffs," Buchanan wrote. On offer is two weeks of salary for every year of service plus health benefits for a period of up to 52 weeks. The offer expires Aug. 15,...

In another blow to the local newspaper industry, the San Francisco Chronicle just announced 125 employees will be cut through voluntary buyouts. The buyouts, which will effect all departments and include management, will be officially offered on Monday, August 4. The buyout packages will be similar to those offered to employees last year. They include two weeks pay per year of service, with a minimum of 4 weeks and a maximum of 52 weeks. Last year, the Chronicle laid off about 100 employees of which about 70 were members of the Northern California Media Workers Guild. "They're cutting deep into...

A. H. Belo Corporation said Monday it would cut 14 percent of its workforce, reduce other costs and explore selling some of its real estate, as the Dallas-based newspaper company announced its second quarterly loss in a row. The company will make voluntary severance offers this week to employees at three of its daily newspapers, including The Dallas Morning News , with the goal of completing the process by mid-September. The company aims to shed 500 full-time equivalent positions, and will make involuntary layoffs if it does not reach that goal. Those cuts and others are expected to lower costs...

CNN’s chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, reporting on Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin on Thursday’s “The Situation Room,” expressed her shock that the European crowd didn’t seem to have the same mania for the Democrat that the media has: “I did ask some people as they were leaving what they thought. Everybody said good, good. But I was surprised that there wasn't this sort of euphoria afterwards, given how many people had come to listen and how much it had been anticipated.” She later stated in the segment that one unnamed political analyst talked about how “people [in Europe] want...

Pinch Sulzberger has taken perhaps the most recognizable media brand in the country and run it into the ground. Can the Gray Lady be saved?

As the economy stumbled in the second quarter, magazine ad sales fell more than 8 percent, with the steepest drops in ads for vehicles and for computers and related equipment, according to a report released Thursday. The report, compiled by the Publishers Information Bureau, shows the industry’s troubles growing worse. Ad pages sold in magazines in the United States declined slightly last year, 0.8 percent, then fell 6.4 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the period a year earlier, and 8.2 percent in the second quarter. For the first six months of the year, automotive ad...

The Chicago Tribune began informing staff Tuesday it will eliminate around 80 of its current 578 newsroom positions by the end of August and reduce the number of pages it publishes by 13 percent to 14 percent each week. There also will be a reduction of jobs in other Chicago Tribune departments, but that number was not immediately available. A paper spokesman declined comment. Because some newsroom jobs have been left unfilled in recent months, the actual number of staffers to exit the paper is expected to be between 55 and 58. "Like many newspapers, we're feeling financial pressures," Hanke...

Tribune Tower is in play. Tribune Co. Chairman Sam Zell told staff today the company is in discussions with "a number of real estate firms" to determine how to generate the most value from the neo-Gothic Michigan Avenue home of the flagship Chicago Tribune, an iconic bookend of the city's Magnificent Mile. The company is also weighing its strategic options concerning the Los Angeles Times' downtown Times Mirror Square complex, another high-profile real estate asset. "When we started this adventure together, I made a point of saying we would challenge traditional thinking, that there would be no sacred cows, and...

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution eliminated 21 jobs in its information technology department, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, which added the June 18 cuts were part of a restructuring. AJC spokesperson Jennifer Morrow told the paper that 30 full-time positions were eliminated but nine of them were open, resulting in 21 employees cut. The job cuts come less than two months after the paper announced a restructuring of its circulation department, cutting 62 positions and reducing distribution operations down to 49 counties. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the paper saw a daily circulation drop of 8.5% to 326,907, in...

Print advertising sales by American newspapers fell the most on record in the first quarter, tumbling 14 percent as the real estate and job markets shrank and business was lost to the Internet. Advertisers spent $8.43 billion on newspaper ads in the first three months of 2008, according to the Newspaper Association of America, the eighth drop in a row. Real estate and recruitment ads each fell 35 percent. Many of the industry’s biggest advertisers in real estate, automotive and employment are cutting spending and shifting advertising to their own Web sites, said Kip Cassino, research director at Borrell Associates,...

In the wake of falling subscriptions and advertising revenue, the Deseret News is shedding 35 staffers by mid-July. "There is no question it is a huge punch in the gut to everyone's morale," said Editor Joe Cannon on Thursday afternoon following a staff meeting. The newspaper, owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, will rethink its operation from top to bottom, Cannon said. "We will become more local, more online, and more Mormon," he said. The paper's revenues declined 32 percent since January, according to the Deseret News, as advertisers sought out other media, including the Internet....

MEMPHIS, Tenn. The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis says it is cutting 55 jobs because of slow advertising sales. The Commercial Appeal, which has about 700 employees in the Memphis area, did not give details on the job reductions, saying they were still being worked out. The newspaper said the cuts will be completed by July 1. The Memphis newspaper, with a daily circulation of about 150,650, is part of Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co. The job cuts were due to a "downturn in the local economy and continued weakness in many traditional advertising sectors," according to the newspaper's story about...

Media General reported weak April newspaper financial results Thursday, largely on plunging revenues in Tampa and its other two metro markets -- which drove help-wanted classified revenues down 42% and real estate down 40%. Overall revenue at the Richmond, Va.-based publisher and broadcaster fell 10.9% to $78.7 million in April. The Associated Press now reports that Media General says it will cut 750 jobs by the beginning of the third quarter to reduce operating costs. "The Richmond company says the reductions by October are in response to an overall slowing of the U.S. economy and a deepening recession in Florida,...

ASBURY PARK Gannett Co. Inc. on Friday said it was offering buyouts to a total of 160 workers at five of its six newspapers in the state of New Jersey, as advertising revenues decline. The buyouts were offered to employees over age 55 who have at least 15 years of service with the company, said Judi Dorsey, vice president for human resources at the Asbury Park Press, Gannett's flagship paper in the state. The 160 employees targeted were asked to respond to the offer by the end of next week. Layoffs are possible if not enough buyouts are accepted, Dorsey...

The owner of the Star Tribune has informed investors that it has written down the value of its $100 million investment in the newspaper by 75 percent to reflect deteriorating conditions since the purchase in March 2007. "In the past year, the newspaper industry has suffered greater than expected declines in circulation and advertising revenue, particularly in print classified advertising," the memo from New York's Avista Capital Partners said. "The outlook in the near to medium term remains uncertain." The write-down, taken at the end of 2007, reflects the estimated loss of value and is consistent with the falling stock...

The Minneapolis Star Tribune, reeling under a heavy debt load and plummeting advertising sales, is on the brink of bankruptcy, The Post has learned. One of the nation's top dailies, "The Strib," as it is known to readers in the Twin Cities, recently hired the Wall Street powerhouse Blackstone Group to restructure its balance sheet after failing to meet its debt obligations, according to people familiar with the company. The broadsheet is unlikely to shutter its doors, but its creditors, including the banking giant Credit Suisse Group, figure to eventually end up controlling the paper. Down the road, the creditor...

Standard & Poor's on Tuesday cut its long-term ratings on New York Times Co. to one level above junk because of declining newspaper ad revenue. S&P lowered its corporate credit rating and senior unsecured debt rating for the newspaper publisher to BBB- from BBB.

First in a series. NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- By now you know the story: The business of newspapers is in decline. It's a terminal decline, if you believe experts such as Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California at Annenberg. His research suggests traditional media in general must learn to shrink but newspapers in particular are a special case. "When an offline reader of a paper dies, he or she is not being replaced by a new reader," he said. "How much time do they have? We think they have 20...

THE New York Times' news room is bracing for a bloodbath in the next 10 days. The word from inside is that approximately 50 unionized journalists have accepted the buyout proposal, and only another 20 non-union editorial employees have gotten on board. That means the ax could fall on as many as 30 editorial people in the company's first-ever mass firing of journalists in its 156-year history.

Critics of newspapers say that part of the problem is that the industry has lost its ability to surprise. Tell that to the guys who have just bought in. “The news business is something worse than horrible. If that’s the future, we don’t have much of a future,” Sam Zell, who bought the Tribune Company last year, said recently in The Baltimore Sun. “I’m an optimist, but it is very hard to be positive about what’s going on,” said Brian P. Tierney, who bought The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News in 2006. “The near term and medium term...

Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth today announced what everybody had long feared: That the Post would be offering employees buyout packages. As you know, we announced on February 7 that, in light of the difficult business climate we face, we plan to offer Voluntary Retirement Incentive Programs (VRIPs) to help us reduce costs and gain efficiency as we restructure for the future. While business conditions have regrettably brought us again to this point, these VRIPs will allow us to offer eligible employees the opportunity to retire with enhanced benefits and, at the same time, provide us with an important opportunity...

Late this spring The Capital Times will dramatically enhance its Internet site as well as alter its print frequency from six days to two days per week to address changing habits of afternoon newspaper readers, company executives announced Thursday. Publisher Clayton Frink said the newspaper's online site, captimes.com, will feature increased volume, depth and timeliness of news, opinion and other information. He said the printed edition of the newspaper will expand its distribution by about five times and switch from six-day publication to two weekly tabloid-size editions."The Capital Times has been a progressive media voice in Madison for 90 years,...

This was going to be the CW's breakthrough year. The little TV network was full of promise five months ago on the eve of its second season. Advertisers and even curmudgeonly TV critics were gushing over its new fall shows. Buzz on the Internet was wild in anticipation of the much-hyped "Gossip Girl," a soapy drama about pampered prep school students in Manhattan. But instead of catching fire, the CW's new crop of shows flickered in the ratings. Then came the strike by Hollywood writers, which halted the production of programs including CW's "Smallville" and "Supernatural." "The strike is a...

Los Angeles Times editor James O'Shea was fired just 14 months after he assumed the post, over a budgetary disagreement with publisher David Hiller, according to a person familiar with the situation. Mr. O'Shea's exit comes little more than a month after the Times' parent company Tribune Co. was taken private in a $8.2 billion buyout. Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell won effective control in the buyout and became chairman and CEO of Tribune. The Chicago-based company owns several newspapers, including the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune and Newsday, as well as a chain of TV stations. A Tribune...

Sun-Times wrestles with new reality Planned newsroom layoffs and other cost cuts highlight shifts in the industry's business model, and readers in Chicago -- a notoriously competitive news town -- may ultimately suffer By Barbara Rose and Robert Manor Tribune staff reporters January 9, 2008 Readers of the Chicago Sun-Times picked up a smaller paper Tuesday, the latest tangible sign of the economic struggles engaging metropolitan newspapers around the country. The tabloid's physical shrinkage, by about 1 inch to save newsprint costs, is more easily accomplished than the pending staff cuts that will pare editorial positions by 19 percent, the...

I am surprised that so many Freepers seem so gleeful when newspapers shut down, as demonstrated by the label "Dinosaur Media DeathWatch". I like newspapers, and I hope that my kids will read them. I know the New York Times and many other papers are biased left, but that's not a good reason for condemning the entire medium. Besides, condemning something for having been around for a while -- being a "dinosaur" -- is not very conservative.

NEW YORK The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., has lost at least $11.5 million in advertising in the past year, according to a letter to staffers from Publisher George Arwady, which predicts the paper will have to undergo serious cutbacks and plans to ask its four unions for work-rule changes in their current contracts. "As a result of several years of such trends, your newspaper is losing money -- a lot of money. If you’ve attended any of my employee meetings, you've been hearing about this situation in detail for some time," Arwady wrote in the letter to numerous employees before...

CINCINNATI The Post newspapers in Cincinnati and Kentucky printed their final editions yesterday, ending a 126-year run. The front-page headline in the last Kentucky Post proclaimed "-30-," a symbol used by journalists, printers, and telegraphers to signal the end of a dispatch. It rolled off the presses about an hour after its sister Cincinnati Post ended publication. The two papers, which were published in the afternoon, have been struggling for decades, part of a national trend. E.W. Scripps Co., of Cincinnati, owner of the two papers, decided in July to close them when a joint operating agreement with Gannett Co....

For the Chinese, starting in early February, this will be the Year of the Rat. But on Madison Avenue, it's more likely to be the year of the cornered rat. The rise of the Web is forcing ad executives to reinvent how they create ads and even changing the way some ad companies are structured. But until now, few advertisers have spent more than 5% to 10% of their marketing budgets online. With the growth of online video and social networking, ad experts expect that percentage to jump significantly this year. Softness in the economy will also likely drive more...

The subprime mortgage crisis is tearing through the newspaper industry as US papers suffer sharp falls in real estate advertising. The extent of the damage was visible this month when Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, reported a 40 per cent decline in November for its real estate classified advertising revenues. Gannett, the largest chain, said recently it was on track for a 27 per cent drop in real estate advertising for the fourth quarter after reporting a 23 per cent slide in the third quarter. Edward Atorino, an analyst at Benchmark Capital, said: “It’s...

RUSH: "NBC officially announced today that its two late-night stars, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien, will return to the air on Jan. 2 even if the [writers] strike ... is not resolved by then. The two hosts would be forced to perform without writers, and might have to face opposition from the Writers Guild, which has thus far urged the late-night hosts to support the strike by staying off the air." But they want to get back.  Why do they want to come back?  I know they love their jobs. They love their jobs. They like the money and so...

From an anonymous emailer: "Surprise major layoffs at cbsnews.com. Number unconfirmed but more than five. This after unpublicized hiring freeze over past few months. Layoffs include mix of veterans and newbies. Already low morale said to now be even lower." When asked for a response, CBS Interactive gave TVNewser this statement: "During 2007, CBS Interactive acquired three companies, invested in 11 more, and grew its workforce by hundreds of employees, including the formation of a new senior management team. Along with the core success of CBSsports.com, new online sites from Last.fm to Dotspotter have infused invaluable DNA into the division,...

NEW YORK (Media Week) - Fourth-ranked broadcaster NBC has quietly begun reimbursing advertisers an average of $500,000 each for failing to reach guaranteed ratings levels, the first time a network has taken such a step in years, media buyers said. Networks usually offer make-goods -- free advertising slots -- in the event of such shortfalls. But NBC has none to give. In fact, no broadcast network has much ad inventory left between now and year's end -- except for, perhaps, a handful of units the week between Christmas and New Year's, and that doesn't do much for advertisers chasing holiday...

January 1 is more than three weeks away, but who needs Carson Daly, Ryan Seacrest and a bunch of drunks in New York's Times Square to ring in the new year? In media circles, it feels as though the big ball already has dropped on "two-thousand, oh wait." Whether that ball will bounce remains to be seen. It's going to be a year of change, sometimes painful, in any case. Recent industrywide declines in revenue coupled with the cost of investing in traditional media while competing on the Internet have made the numbers harder to crunch, meaning personnel and resources...

Jossip reports that a "former NBC News network insider who maintains close ties with Mama Peacock's news division" has told the site that "there are going to be firings (at NBC News) very soon — everybody is terrified." The source gives a two-week time frame for the layoffs. An NBC News spokesperson had no comment for TVNewser. ICN, though, has lots to say about the possibility of firings, specifically with regard to how that might affect MSNBC. "There are going to be firings very soon — everybody is terrified.” That’s the promise being made to us by a former NBC...

NEW YORK, Nov 28 (Reuters) - The Kansas City Star is offering 20 weeks of pay to employees who leave the newspaper after working there for 20 uninterrupted years or more, making it the latest U.S. paper to cut jobs amid ongoing declines in advertising sales. The Star, owned by McClatchy Co (MNI.N: Quote, Profile, Research), is limiting the program to fewer than 4 percent of its nearly 1,400 employees, according to an article on its Web site. All divisions, including about 300 newsroom staff, are eligible, Publisher Mac Tully told Reuters in an interview. "It is a changing business...

NEW YORK Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, in a memo to staff today announced "that there are going to be layoffs in the newsroom, for the first time in recent memory." He added that a "hiring freeze" will continue, with open positions filled internally, and next year "we also expect to eliminate a few management jobs in administrative areas." For now, a dozen "support" workers will be getting the axe, but Keller said the paper has still been able "to avoid the kind of drastic staff cutbacks other news organizations have endured." Keller noted, "As we...

Mags Could Be Paying 25% More Next Year Due to Mergers in Pulp Biz Magazine publishers are already facing way too many rising costs: technology investments, postage, editors both diva and deserving. But the seemingly mundane budget line for glossy paper is suddenly the one everyone is worried about. Welcome to our hell, publishers said last week. "I frankly became more of a quasi-expert than I would want to be, only out of necessity," said John P. Loughlin, exec VP-general manager at Hearst Magazines. The weakness of the American dollar is increasingly restricting publishers' overseas options. Seller's market More worrisome,...

Let me get this straight: In order to save America's newspapers, we should give Big Media more freedom of ownership? Is that right? Did I hear that correctly? Because if so, I want to make sure my passport is stamped. I'd hate to get caught in Bizarro World without the proper papers. Earlier this month, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin J. Martin, said the 32-year-old ban on cross-ownership in the media — whereby a company cannot own more than one media outlet in a market — is passé. He proposed lifting the ban in larger markets to...