Posted on 09/11/2006 4:56:21 AM PDT by abb
It will be a big story at The Dallas Morning News, but you won’t find it on the front page.
On Thursday, the paper is expected to announce that more than 100 of 580 newsroom staff members have accepted severance packages, shrinking the size of the newsroom by roughly 20 percent.
It is not yet official that all the buyout applications will be accepted, but Robert W. Mong Jr., the editor, said that managers would try to accommodate everyone who had applied.
As a result, what was once a newspaper with national reach, one that broke the story of the savings and loan scandals in the 1980’s, will focus mainly on local and regional news.
“Best case, I think it will look like a paper with really strong local coverage and a lot of good wire stories,” said Stuart Wilk, a former managing editor who retired from the paper in 2005. “The national and international coverage will be the same coverage that you see in the Sioux Falls paper and the Elkhart, Ind., paper and in the Fort Worth paper.
“And to those of us who see newspapers as something other than local, covering City Hall and covering the Rangers, that’s really sad.”
The last few years have not been kind to The Morning News or to its owner, the Belo Corporation, based in Dallas. While the paper is still profitable, in the last five years there have been two rounds of layoffs, and Belo acknowledged in 2004 that the paper had been overstating its circulation by 9 percent daily and 13 percent on Sunday.
So far, the staff has responded to the impending buyouts with a mix of fury and resignation. An anonymous Morning News staffer started a blog, newsbuyout.blogspot.com, to chronicle news of the buyouts.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ping
What the hell are those? Oh yeah, the ones with the pictures.
My fellow Freepers may gloat, but this is nothing to be happy about. I am a member of the Dallas Press Club, and I know a lot of people who work at the Morning News (or used to). Many of them are talented, hard-working writers with no personal political agendas and with families to support, being put out of work and replaced by cookie-cutter wire copy from lovely places like AP and Reuters (that will make the national coverage MORE skewed, not less). One of them who covers national issues is someone I know personally to be a pretty big conservative. Don't be so quick to celebrate other people's misfortune; the firing of a lot of local newspaper employees is not the same as CBS canning Dan Rather.
If true, they should have no trouble finding new employment.
All of their content is online as are all of their advertisers. Less garbage to throw out.
The obvious solution is to get rid of AP and Reuters, not just the Dallas Morning Pravda.
Unfortunately, firing people at the local level (in this case, people covering Bush who are actually from Bush's home state) and replacing them with A.P. and Reuters copy will just give more power and exposure to A.P. and Reuters. Not the ideal outcome.
more...
Dallas Morning News gets ready to reduce staff
Web Posted: 09/11/2006 09:32 PM CDT
Melissa S. Monroe
Express-News Business Writer
The Dallas Morning News, which has long strived to be a national media presence, is about to become smaller and more locally focused as about one-fifth of its staff is expected to take voluntary buyouts and leave the paper this week.
The New York Times reported Monday that more than 100 of 580 Dallas newsroom staff members have accepted severance packages, shrinking the size of the newsroom by 20 percent.
Dallas Morning News Editor and President Robert W. Mong Jr. wouldn't confirm an exact number, but said the goal was to get 85 staffers to accept the buyout and more than that did so. He said the paper is still reviewing the settlements, so the number fluctuates.
"Revenues at major metros in the last five or six years have been fairly flat," Mong said. "Our news staff is the largest in the Southwest and we went through an involuntary reduction in October of 2004. Now we have decided to get the staff more in harmony with the revenues. We'll still come out of this with the largest and most experienced staff in the region."
The Dallas Morning News, owned by media giant Belo Corp., announced the buyouts Aug. 10 and gave employees until this week to decide.
The paper's woes are not uncommon in the newspaper industry, which has been suffering from declines in readers and advertisers as more consumers go to the Internet for news. Dissatisfied shareholders recently forced the breakup of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain in a buyout by Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy Co.
More Coverage
www.dallasnews.com
Established in 1885, the Dallas Morning News is the nation's 10th-largest newspaper, serving a weekly print and online audience of more than 2.1 million. The paper has won eight Pulitzer Prizes since 1986.
Mong said while the national and international coverage won't be as far-reaching, staffers will still travel to cover stories and the paper will keep its Mexico and Washington, D.C., bureaus intact.
"We'll do the projects that take us to all sorts of places nationally and internationally like we have done in the past, but there's something you have to give up," he said.
The community will also suffer by losing some of its favorite critics and columnists, said Tracy Everbach, an assistant professor in the journalism department of the University of North Texas in Denton who worked at the Dallas Morning News for 12 years.
When she was there, Everbach said, the paper was striving to be like The New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. This reduction, she said, makes it less competitive.
"I think this is a sad day for journalism," Everbach said. "The bottom line is they are accountable to shareholders and the stock price has gone down, so they have to do something about that. They are putting that in front of journalism."
But the paper's problems didn't start with a declining stock price. In 2004, Dallas-based Belo incurred about $24 million in expenses to appease Morning News advertisers who discovered that they were paying to reach thousands fewer readers than the company claimed. Belo admitted in 2004 that the paper had overstated its circulation by 9 percent daily and 13 percent on Sunday.
Belo soon after laid off 250 employees companywide, which included reductions at the newspaper and television stations.
Even before the recent buyout offer, many staffers knew the paper had to reduce its staff.
Arts Editor Rick Holter applied for the buyout after working at the paper 14 years. He's worried about the future of newspapers.
"We had layoffs two years ago and that was the roughest part of my career, and this is somewhat harder," he said. "The good thing about this is that the people going through the process have a choice compared to layoffs."
The buyout also provides Pete Slover, 46, who has worked at the Dallas Morning News for 17 years, a chance to do something with his law degree.
He said most staffers knew something was coming, but were caught off guard by a buyout that didn't relate to age or seniority.
"It's no surprise the industry hasn't figured out its model on how to make money," said Slover, a reporter in the newspaper's Austin bureau, which will remain open. "But relative to the way it could have ended up with my bureau closing or involuntary layoffs, this is a pretty good thing."
mmonroe@express-news.net
Online at: http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/stories/MYSA091206.1E.DMNBuyouts.27a8533.html
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