Posted on 10/21/2006 1:48:57 PM PDT by abb
SAN JOSE The San Jose Mercury News plans to lay off as many as 101 employees over the next two months to cut costs and make up for declining advertising revenue, the paper said Friday.
The company will eliminate 41 newsroom positions - or about 15 percent of its editorial staff - by Dec. 19, with the rest of the cuts coming from other departments including circulation, finance, marketing and human resources, said Dan Breeden, a Mercury News spokesman.
The cuts, which officials say will be made mostly through layoffs, will sever about 8 percent of the paper's overall workforce. About 10 to 15 currently open positions across the company could be included in those cuts, Breeden said.
The company does not yet know which employees will be laid off, and all employees in targeted departments were notified about the plans.
"It's an economic decision," Breeden said. "We're preparing for needing to lay off 101, but it's really our hope that the cuts don't go quite so deep."
Newspapers across the country have been slashing staff as investors have increasingly demanded they maintain their profit margins amid declining revenues.
Also Friday, the new publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News told employees that layoffs are "unavoidable."
The job cuts in San Jose come after Denver-based MediaNews Group Inc. acquired the Mercury News from McClatchy Co. in August, establishing itself as the largest newspaper publisher in the San Francisco Bay area with more than 700,000 subscribers.
It also acquired the Contra Costa Times in the same deal. Publisher John Armstrong said Friday that Editor Chris Lopez was leaving the paper, but no other layoffs were planned.
Armstrong said in a statement to staff that Lopez's position had become "redundant" as the company consolidated its Bay Area news operations.
"Given the serious revenue pressures all newspapers are facing ... we cannot afford any redundancy, especially at the senior management level," he said.
In a story published in August in the Times, Mercury News Publisher George Riggs discussed the deepening financial woes facing the newspaper industry. He said papers would have be become "super, super efficient" about costs and suggested they become "the Wal-Mart of information purveyors."
Riggs said in a note to his staff that the company was required to give the 60-day notice under state law.
"I understand the uncertainty these staffing cuts create for everyone, and deeply regret that we have to take this action," Riggs said in the note. "Please know that we would not do so unless it was absolutely necessary to ensure the future viability of our newspaper."
The paper is also negotiating three separate union contracts. Luther Jackson, executive officer for the San Jose Newspaper Guild, said the cuts come at a particularly painful time for the paper, as more than 50 guild workers took buyouts in November.
"Our concern is, you keep making cuts and cuts, and at what point does it hurt the quality of the product?" he said. "That's what we need to draw revenues. I don't see how this benefits the paper."
abb, I've seen this same post the last few days a few other times. Was that you too? Glad to see it, hope to see this same post many many many more times in the future.
Good job.
It's a start...
Clearly, a federal program is needed....
Nope. Service Employees members have more time-in-grade. The best that these j-skool losers can hope for is a McJob or they can don a blue vest at Wally-World. Funny thing is, their Internet revenues are OK. Not excellent, but OK. Their servers and IT support have been outsourced, in the name of globalization. The irony is so thick that it can not be cut by a Columbia degree!
More...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/21/BUG3HLTDGO1.DTL
Mercury News plans to eliminate 101 jobs
Contra Costa Times says it also has plan to reduce expenses
- Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Two major Bay Area daily newspapers that recently got a new owner are making aggressive moves to slash costs.
The San Jose Mercury News plans to reduce its workforce by 101 positions, or 8.5 percent, by Dec. 19 because of declines in revenue, the newspaper said Friday. The projected staff cuts include 40 jobs in the newsroom, or about 14 percent of the editorial staff of 280.
The Contra Costa Times, which has also experienced steep declines in advertising revenue, plans to act quickly to lower operating costs, according to a memo Thursday from its publisher. And in another memo on Friday, the Times said that Editor Chris Lopez is leaving the paper because his position has become "redundant." Executive Editor Kevin Keane will take over Lopez's responsibilities.
The Mercury and the Contra Costa Times were acquired earlier this year by MediaNews Group, a Denver publisher that already owns every major newspaper in the Bay Area except The Chronicle, which is owned by New York's Hearst Corp., and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, owned by the New York Times Co. In a complex transaction, Hearst provided financial backing for MediaNews' purchase of some other papers in exchange for an unspecified stake in MediaNews properties outside the Bay Area. An antitrust lawsuit challenging the Hearst-MediaNews arrangement is scheduled to be heard in federal court in San Francisco in April.
"We're seeing consolidation, or clustering, as they call it," under MediaNews ownership, said Luther Jackson, executive director of the San Jose Newspaper Guild, which represents about 500 Mercury employees, including newsroom, advertising, finance, circulation, marketing and janitorial workers. Six years ago, the Mercury had 820 Guild positions, he said.
"Our whole industry is going through a structural transformation as we all migrate from printing news with ink on paper to a new business model that will be the digital and electronic transmission of information," said Susan Goldberg, executive editor of the Mercury. "Our revenue is growing like crazy on the Internet, but it remains a small piece of the overall revenue picture. Ads on the Internet are a lot cheaper than ads in print, so the business model isn't supporting the newsgathering operation."
Newspapers nationwide are under mounting financial pressure as they compete with the Internet and other media for readers and advertisers. Earlier this month, Los Angeles Times Publisher Jeffrey Johnson was forced to step down after he refused a demand by the paper's owner, the Tribune Co., to reduce the newsroom staff.
At the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, formerly owned by Knight Ridder Inc., which also used to own the San Jose and Contra Costa papers, the new publisher told employees on Friday that layoffs are "unavoidable" because advertising revenue is down, according to the Associated Press.
Mercury Publisher George Riggs wrote to employees that any cost-savings measures and upturns in income over the next two months could reduce the number of positions to be eliminated.
The Mercury will select those to be laid off using criteria specified under its union contract, including general competence, qualifications, ability to do available work and length of service. The current union contract expired June 30 but remains in force while a new one is negotiated.
At the Contra Costa Times, Publisher John Armstrong wrote to employees that real estate advertising has experienced a "sharp and rather sudden decline" since the summer, and job ads and national ads have also declined. The paper will present plans to cut costs and boost revenue to its owners next week and will begin implementing them immediately after winning approval, he wrote.
E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com.
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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/21/BUG3HLTDGO1.DTL
LOL --- the area is a liberal infestation. This is super news.
good living in the bay area this newspaper and the chronicle are left wing and never give any good news they are one sided
The Contra Costa Times, which has also experienced steep declines in advertising revenue, plans to act quickly to lower operating costs, according to a memo Thursday from its publisher. And in another memo on Friday, the Times said that Editor Chris Lopez is leaving the paper because his position has become "redundant." Executive Editor Kevin Keane will take over Lopez's responsibilities.
LOL
Same here. A subscription to a Gannett paper is nothing more than contribution to the Democratic party.
FWIW, the only papers that I read lately are the free ones available laying around coffee shops. The news stories are hopelessly slanted like the pay ones, but they fill the time while watching the scenery.
makes my day!!!
Actually, the Mercury-News splashed "Merry Christmas" across the top of their front page last Dec. 25, if my memory is correct. It's a liberal newspaper, no question, but they did say Merry Christmas to their readers.
I've already read all the news, on-line, by the time a paper can land on my doorstep. Even if the papers weren't tilted left, they'd be dying. The leftish tilt probably accelerates the process - but not necessarily in Mercury-News land, which is as liberal as the newspaper.
The Times Goes Soft
...The difficulty for the Times and its shareholders is that online revenues, while likely to rise to $250 million this year, are still dwarfed by the core newspaper business. I sense that management would love to awaken to miraculously find Internet-related operations constituting the bulk of its business. While the company has been slow to leverage this shift, investors have watched their share price decline steadily from around $50 four years ago to slightly below $23 today.
Reinsurance Abuses At End, Buffett Says
...Buffett said declines in circulation result from readers turning to alternative sources , such as free Web sites and television. And he said owning the dominant news Web site in a region is not enough to guarantee sustained profitability for newspaper firms.
As an example, he cited Buffalo, where Berkshire owns the Buffalo News and Buffalo.com, which he described as the most popular news Web site in the city. "We've got the best position, but it isn't remotely like owning the paper 30 years ago."
Buffett said buying newspapers was once an excellent investment because the dominant paper in any city could count on steady advertising revenue and could raise ad rates, often as much as it wanted, every year. With circulation dropping, that is no longer the case, Buffett said.
The slide has been sharp across advertising sectors, including real estate, job placement and automotive.and that's because nobody out there is buying or selling houses, hiring new people or selling new and used cars... is that what they are trying to tell us??? please.
Waaaah...let me try to muster a tear. And this from someone with a journalism degree.
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