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