Posted on 07/08/2008 2:17:45 PM PDT by abb
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 Gratteau, the Chicago Tribune's managing editor for news, said.
These reductions are the paper's fourth since late 2005, when its newsroom had around 670 positions. They have been expected since Randy Michaels, chief operating officer of Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co., said last month in a conference call with lenders that all the company's papers would be cutting staff and the number of pages by mid-September in response to steep declines in publishing revenue so far this year.
These industrywide trends, the result of online advertising revenue growth unable to offset print advertising declines, are resonating in similar fashion at nearly every U.S. newspaper company, including the New York Times and Washington Post.
The Los Angeles Times, Tribune Co.'s largest newspaper, announced last week it planned to reduce the number of pages it publishes each week by 15 percent and eliminate roughly 150 jobs--or about 17 percent--from its newsroom by Labor Day, and had already made progress toward reduction of another 100 positions from its other departments. Coupled with other cuts over the years, the Times' newsroom now is a little more than half the size it was at its peak in the 1990s.
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(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
ping
Note to “journalists”” Try printing news in the news section and leave opinions to the fiction (editorial) section. It might even improve your circulation. If you do loose your job, you can always to into the other profession not requiring any education: politics.
More personnel cuts to Obama’s campaign..
"Like many newspapers, we're losing readers and advertisers at an amazing rate due to competition from on-line news sources that don't try to hide the fact that they're biased. We have decided to approach this problem in exactly the same way as every other newspaper in the country. Specifically, we will lay off editors, reporters, pressmen, route managers, and janitorial staff, until there is just a single college-educated liberal, swimming against the tide of reality while making himself and his two remaining readers feel really good inside. It'll be his job to turn off the lights."
Hey Tomkow get in here this your hometown newspaper
Start with the editorial board and their anti-2nd Amendment advocates.
bump
This is the paper that got Obama elected in the first place. During the race the Tribune published sealed divorce documents pertaining to his opponent. Huh. Karma can be enjoyable.
Great #7 post!!!!!! BTTT !!
The Obamination loses more campaign workers, he didn’t have to pay for.
http://www.suntimes.com/business/roeder/1045055,tribweb070908.article
Tribune to cut 80 newsroom jobs
July 8, 2008
BY DAVID ROEDER droeder@suntimes.com
Sam Zell took his first bite out of the Chicago Tribune newsroom Tuesday, disclosing plans to lay off about 15 percent of its staff.
And the bite may be followed by more. Tribune employees said they have heard the reductions in the paper’s 570-person editorial department could total from 150 to 200.
» Click to enlarge image
Sam Zell (inset) disclosed plans to lay off about 15 percent of the newsroom staff at the Chicago Tribune.
(AP)
Employees said department heads told them 80 positions will be cut by the end of August. They said the total includes 20 positions that are unfilled.
The timing of the announcement is unusual because an internal Tribune review was not expected to produce recommendations on job cuts until mid-August. Staffers speculate more cuts will come as Tribune editors complete plans for eliminating sections and reducing the space devoted to news and features.
The paper is acting on a mandate from Zell and Randy Michaels, chief operating officer of Tribune Co., to slash expenses in response to declines in advertising and circulation revenue. The industrywide recession is hitting Zell especially hard because he swallowed $13 billion in debt last December when he took control of Tribune Co., converting it from stockholder to employee ownership.
A Tribune spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Sources said the laid-off workers will receive two weeks’ severance for each year of service. They said managers did not explain whether the layoffs will be decided based on salary levels, productivity, job category or other factors.
The cuts are in line with the job losses announced for other Tribune-owned newspapers. The Los Angeles Times, for example, is losing 17 percent of its news staff, or 150 people.
Others include the Hartford Courant, which has outlined news layoffs involving 25 percent of its staff, and the Baltimore Sun, which is eliminating about 7 percent of jobs across all departments.
Oh well, that means the next round of layoffs will have to be bigger.
Well, guess the BS peddlers need to get fitted for Burger King hats.
“You want fries or my opinion with that burger?”
The only way for newspapers to save themselves is to stop hiring college graduates.
I used to subscribe to the Tribune. It was a respectable paper in its day.
I canceled my subscription after the 2000 election and their ceaseless cheerleading for Gore, the facts be damned.
I’d had some back and forth via email with their Washington bureau chief, James Warren, during Clinton’s troubles. I think I posted some of that here. I swear to God that Warren was on the White House payroll. A more gullible or complicit individual could not be conjured, even from fiction.
Up until 2000 I could stomach their d!psh!t columnists like Bob “Can I Borrow Your Intern?” Greene and Eric “The Weasel” Zorn **
Everything the Tribune offers can be had elsewhere, better, for free, without the nutbag liberal bias.
Who in their right mind would continue to pay for such nonsense.
It’s like TV news anymore: it’s News For Shut-ins®
( ** I have special contempt for Eric Zorn. If you’ve never encountered his dangerous lunacy, Google him up. Good God, is that guy ever an Olympic-caliber idiot! And get this, he’s in the bag for Obama! Who could have guessed? )
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