Posted on 10/25/2008 12:15:16 AM PDT by PureSolace
NEW YORK (AP) — The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., will reduce its newsroom staff by nearly half through voluntary buyouts as New Jersey's largest newspaper seeks to return to profitability.
Jim Willse, the Star-Ledger's editor, said Friday that the newspaper accepted 151 buyout offers from its news staff, or about 45 percent of its 334 editorial employees. He said 17 buyout applications were rejected.
Some staffers already have left, and others are leaving by year's end, many after the elections.
"We've got from now to the end of the year to figure out what adjustments we have to make," Willse said. "We will be able to produce an abundance of good stories. We will still have a good paper but we have to figure out exactly how to accomplish that."
The number of buyouts accepted outside the newsroom was not immediately known. The newspaper had sought at least 200 total, out of 750 full-time, nonunion workers, and received more than enough applications.
Two unions agreed to another 120 buyouts combined.
The Star-Ledger, with daily circulation of about 350,000, has posted losses for at least three straight years and was on pace to lose between $30 million and $40 million in 2008. The newspaper won union concessions and enough voluntary buyout applications from nonunion employees to lift a threatened sale or closure by January.
The newspaper's owner, Advance Publications Inc., believes that upcoming operational changes and payroll cuts should return the paper to profitability even if the advertising outlook doesn't improve, though ad prospects are looking worse following last month's financial meltdown, which further depressed spending.
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.google.com ...
It’s a POS paper that desperately wants to be the NJ version of the New York Times. The editorials in the ledger start on page 1 also.
“...though ad prospects are looking worse following last month’s financial meltdown, which further depressed spending.”
What a conundrum: do we keep beating the drum for socialism even though its known effects mean our ad revenues will drop so low as to drive us out of business? What to do, what to do...
I am so sick of these communists masquerading as American journalists.
It figures to get worse.
Let's say you're this editor feller - you got your job by working for collectivists for many years, so you're presumably one, too.
So who's going to get the axe, the guy with the Che poster on the wall of his cubicle or that guy from the Business section who has actually admitted to listening to Lou Dobbs?
These rags are only going to get more leftist the smaller they get until they collapse into black holes (or maybe red holes in this case).
At some point...kinda like a volcanic eruption...there will be this magical point where most newspapers suddenly stop...take a week off and ask themselves why things are so screwed up. Either a paper is run for profit or its run for a bankruptcy (its pretty simple in this world to do both). In the old days, you could run a paper for bankruptcy for years and years...and keep getting enough money from Harvard/Yale/Princeton business dimwits at various banks. These banks aren’t going to discuss the old policy anymore because they just don’t have the credit to shove around.
The newspapers will gradually come to a conclusion, publish what the locals want...or just close down. They’ll ask a hundred locals and discover that they wanted local news...not editorials or politics. They’ll discover an interest in local sports...not national sports. They’ll discover that most folks would prefer the paper to be neutral on political affairs or act that way.
The papers that survive....will be the ones that realized their future. The rest? Thanks to this credit crunch...they are dissolved away...making room for the survivors to flourish and improve their numbers. By 2015...we might all be better off.
I finally canceled the LA Times the other day. I just said that “I had enough”, and they immediately went into this whole spiel about why they endorsed Barack Obama. I never said anything about Obama when I called.
I finally told them to stop driveling and just stop the paper.
I did tell them that I was keeping the local paper becuase they had more local news stories and less coverage about the plight of all of the illegal aliens.
Great news BUMP!!
This Democrat newspaper is more useless than used toilet tissue.
I wish this paper would hurry up and die.
The L.A. Times — what a rag — stopped buying it long ago during one in a series of cuts they continually make to the various sections due to poor readership and layoffs.
Business section really suffered in last go-round.
They constantly send subscription come-ons and I send them back, in their postage paid envelopes, with nasty little notes about how I can jolly well do without their leftist propaganda. Subscription clerks will be only ones to see this, of course, but it’s better than nothing.
I was surprised to learn there were enough people in Newark who could read, to support a newspaper.
With all these newspapers still floundering around, they should read up on how all those buggy-whip makers stayed in business for so long ...
This is great news. Reading deeper shows that only with buy outs and union help have they stopped the coming Janaury closing. If Obama wins that will be the end of this POS because the unions will run the paper and run it into the ground.
Nice news to start a weekend.
Dang. I was hoping the paper would fold. It has been nothing but liberal rag since I was a little boy. I remember the hateful articles about Ronald Reagan and the cheer leading for Sen. Ben Bradley printed by them.
But profits are evil! Only businesses want profits! Profits steal money from the people! Power to the people! Private property is morally wrong!
The Ledger was, is, and will be nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party. Their bias is evident thoughout. If I want to read propaganda I’ll subscribe to Pravda.
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