Troubled Times

Not so long ago, an estimated 55,000 Canadian trees gave their lives for each Sunday edition of the New York Times. That was before North American newspapers went into "secular decline," the term Wall Street uses for industry sectors whose deteriorating fortunes are deemed irreversible.

In the most recent industry figures, released last week, circulation of the doorstopper Sunday Times plummeted another 9.2 per cent in the six months ended March 31, and the Times' weekday numbers slipped another 3.9 per cent. In both cases, the declines were sharper than the industry average.

The Times, which eclipsed the Times of London in the mid-20th century as the most influential paper in the English language, is a special case of ineptitude and complacency. Special because of the influence it does still exert – it ranks third in U.S. readership, after USA Today and the Wall Street Journal – and because the Ochs-Sulzberger family that has controlled the Times since the late 19th century is either unable or unwilling to fix a business model that is broken.

The parent New York Times Co. faces unprecedented turmoil as it heads into a U.S. economic slowdown that will worsen its already poor financial performance. Buckling to two U.S. hedge funds that have accumulated about 19 per cent of Times Co. stock, the Sulzbergers last month surrendered two board seats to the rampart-stormers, who will relentlessly agitate for cost cuts and asset sales to boost the value of their stock.

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Washington Examiner cuts back home delivery, launches Sunday edition

Free tabloid newspaper the Washington Examiner is cutting home delivery on most weekdays and adding a new Sunday edition.

Beginning July 13, The Examiner will cease home-delivery to Washington area households on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but will double the number of single copy papers distributed on newspaper racks and street distribution teams. The paper currently has a daily circulation of 257,400, according to its 2008 advertising rate card.

Meanwhile, the paper is increasing distribution to homes on Thursdays and launching a new Sunday edition. The Examiner will no longer print on Saturdays.

The changes will also take place in its San Francisco and Baltimore editions.

The move is being made in response to readers asking for a Sunday edition of the paper and to better serve advertisers who spend most of their dollars later in the week, said Baltimore Examiner Publisher Michael Beatty.

"What we're doing is kind of realigning our assets for what the market has dictated to us," he said.

... When asked whether the move to reduce the amount of papers distributed on four days a week was to save on printing costs, Beatty said, "This is not about a cost-cutting measure at all."

There will be no layoffs as a result of the changes, he said.

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Revenue problems force Times to cut staff by 125

Following up on vows to bring spending in line with its shrinking revenues, The Seattle Times Co. sliced the staff at its flagship newspaper by 125 employees this week.

Of the total, 73 were laid off and 52 left voluntarily, with 51 accepting buyout offers, spokeswoman Corey Digiacinto said.

The Times announced a month ago that, to help save $15 million, it would freeze 60 unfilled positions and lay off up to 131 employees. Voluntary departures trimmed the number of layoffs needed by more than 40 percent, Digiacinto said.

Before this week's cuts, The Times had 1,845 full-time and part-time employees.

In the newsroom, 19 workers accepted buyouts. They included classical-music critic Melinda Bargreen and nightlife writer Tom Scanlon.

Executive Editor David Boardman said the newspaper recognizes classical music and nightlife are important parts of the community, and plans to continue covering both beats.

"We have yet to figure out exactly who and how," he said.

Fifteen newsroom employees were laid off, including most suburban reporters. The Times has closed its news bureaus in Bellevue and Lynnwood and stopped publishing zoned editions for the Eastside and Snohomish County.

Some reporters will work out of a new bureau at the newspaper's production plant in Bothell, Boardman said.

Digiacinto would not provide a breakdown of layoffs and buyouts for other departments.

But the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, the largest union at the paper, said 49 of its members were laid off — 24 in circulation, eight in advertising and two in operations, in addition to the 15 in news.

In addition to the latest cuts, The Times announced earlier this year that it would lay off 17 employees, mostly in circulation.

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Gannett's New Jersey newspapers offer buyouts

Gannett Co Inc is offering buyouts to employees at most of its New Jersey newspapers, making it the latest U.S. newspaper publisher to try to lower expenses by cutting staff as it deals with an ongoing decline in advertising.

The buyout target is 166 full-time positions, and layoffs are possible if Gannett does not reach its target, Judy Dorsey, vice president of human resources at Gannett's Asbury Park Press paper, said on Friday. She declined to say how many employees work for Gannett's New Jersey papers.

To be eligible, employees must be 55 years or older and have worked for the company for at least 15 years, she said.

The papers offering the buyouts include the Asbury Park Press as well as the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, The Daily Journal in Vineland, the East Brunswick Home News Tribune and the Courier News in Bridgewater.

Gannett's New Jersey papers join a growing list of companies offering buyouts or layoffs as they struggle to offset sharply declining ad revenue.

A Gannett spokeswoman declined to comment when asked if the publisher was offering buyouts in other states. Gannett publishes 84 local daily newspapers in the United States, as well as the national newspaper USA Today.

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Boulder's Camera lays off 9

Boulder's Camera newspaper has laid off nine of its 155 employees -- 6 percent of its staff -- in response to declining advertising revenues.

The layoffs include one newsroom worker and eight other employees, the Camera reported Tuesday.

The nine workers, who were let go Monday, have been offered separation packages.

"It was an incredibly difficult decision to separate from nine terrific, hardworking and caring employees," Al Manzi -- president of Prairie Mountain Publishing, which publishes the Camera and several other Colorado newspapers -- was quoted in the Camera as saying.

"The newspaper business is rapidly changing, as is widely reported, and the Camera is not immune to those changes," he said.

However, he described the Camera's overall business as "healthy" because of growth in readership of its online edition and specialty "niche" publications.

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Journalism's next 100 years

Gary Goldhammer writes about the downward spiral in his blog, Below the Fold:

Yet while overall it was a great first hundred years for American journalism, it’s the next 100 I worry about. Or in the prescient phrase uttered by ABC News anchorman Charles Gibson at Pennsylvania’s recent Democratic presidential debate, “the crowd is turning” on how professionals report the news.

History is the art of hindsight, so writing about an event before the ink dries and the digital bits settle is at best unfair. Nevertheless, you don’t need Galileo’s vision to see that the Pennsylvania debate marked another in series of dark turning points for the news business.

The financial pain we’ve known for while – as this year’s State of the News Media study revealed, advertising revenue is still going down, as are pre-tax earnings, profit margins and stock values. Even online newspaper advertising, while up 20 percent in 2007, is growing slower than online advertising as a whole, and is 10 percent lower than last year.

Newspaper owners answered with widespread staff layoffs, leading to less local reporting and therefore fewer readers which – you guessed it – resulted in less revenue. It’s also meant narrower reporting, with issues like Iraq and the presidential elections representing the majority of coverage. And it’s meant an unhealthy attraction to transient stories that are the equivalent of chewing gum, the media smacking its lips long after the gum has lost its taste.

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Troubled Santa Barbara newspaper lays off 10 workers

The Santa Barbara News-Press laid off 10 employees due to declining revenue stemming from a union-organized boycott, as well as the general dip in readership faced by the news industry, a lawyer for the paper said Friday.

The dismissed employees include two newsroom managers and eight employees from advertising, circulation and other departments, said A. Barry Cappello, who would not identify the laid-off workers.

The layoffs were ordered Thursday, effective immediately, he said.

"The loss of revenue has not only to do with decline in circulation nationwide but the additional cost of the economic boycott that the union has instigated in asking our subscribers to cancel their subscriptions, which thousands of them did," Cappello said.

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Raleigh News & Observer offers buyouts

The Raleigh News & Observer is offering buyout packages to about 200 of its 900 workers, the paper's publisher said on Monday, as falling advertising sales and rising newsprint costs take a toll on daily papers.

The North Carolina paper, which is owned by McClatchy Co (MNI.N: Quote, Profile, Research), is one of a growing number that are offering buyouts or threatening to lay off staff as they try to keep expenses down amid a worsening economy and falling ad revenue triggered in part by a continuing migration of readers to the Internet.

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Latest circulation numbers don't look good

Latest Audit Bureau of Circulations don't look good. New York Times and New York Post and Washington Post numbers are down. Wall Street Journal is one of the few bright spots, with circulation up ever so slightly.

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O.C. Register to cut 80-90 jobs

The Orange County Register and its affiliated publications are laying off between 80 and 90 employees, or 5 percent of its workforce, because of declining advertising revenue, President and Publisher Terry Horne said Monday.

Horne said declines in real estate and classified job advertising have created a short-term financial problem that forced the cutbacks, which are scheduled to be completed on Wednesday. He did not provide any financial details other than to say "if you take out the impact of those categories, the Register is still a growth company."

Newspapers nationwide are making cuts in the wake of a 23-year decline in circulation and more recent losses of advertising to the Internet.

"Fundamental shifts have occurred in how people acquire and use information, and this affects how they conduct business on the Internet and with newspapers," Horne said. "If we don't make large-scale changes now, there's no promise of a continually profitable and sustainable enterprise in the future."

This is the third round of layoffs in a year for Orange County Register Communications, the umbrella brand for the Register newspaper, web sites, magazines and other community publications. The company also completed a voluntary severance program to cut staff in 2006.

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Wisconsin daily dead, now online-only

With print revenue down and online revenue growing, newspaper executives are anticipating the day when big city dailies and national papers will abandon their print versions.

That day has arrived in Madison, Wis.

On Saturday, The Capital Times, the city’s fabled 90-year-old daily newspaper founded in response to the jingoist fervor of World War I, stopped printing to devote itself to publishing its daily report on the Web.

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Chicago Tribune cancels subscriptions

The Chicago Tribune will stop distribution in parts of southern and central Illinois beginning Monday, the latest newspaper to cut its circulation in order to cut costs.

Michael Dizon, a Tribune spokesman, said the newspaper had previously printed Midwest editions at satellite facilities in Champaign and Madison, Wis. Since the newspaper no longer prints out of those facilities, many areas in central and southern Illinois will no longer be able to receive the newspaper other than its online version.

"We are changing distribution strategy and certain areas of downstate will be impacted by it," Dizon said. "This is due in part to cost-saving efforts."

Letters were sent out to subscribers of the newspaper that stated the company's reasoning and possible alternatives.

"Business conditions, including cost to produce and distribute to your area have necessitated this curtailment of service," the letter read.

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Lock-out of Journal de Québec workers turns one Tuesday

QUEBEC CITY, April 15 /CNW Telbec/ - April 22, 2008 marks the first anniversary of the day Quebecor/Sun Media locked-out its employees at the Journal de Québec

The lockout came as a shock since Quebecor was racking up profits of $25 million annually thanks to the Journal de Québec. The daily was consistently the highest-ranking paper in its market in Canada and had no history of labour strife in forty years.

On April 22, Quebec unions will demonstrate in the province's capital city and locked-out workers will call for a boycott of the Journal de Québec.

Denis Bolduc, spokesperson for the Journal de Québec workers is asking Quebec City residents to encourage Quebecor to either come back to the bargaining table or agree to binding arbitration.

"To commemorate the one-year anniversary of the lockout, we are asking the public for help in sending a clear message to Quebecor management - don't buy or read the Journal de Québec. Ignore it, for now."

Bolduc reminds that Quebecor precipitated the lockout without cause. The media giant has backed itself into a corner and since the lockout has refused any interviews on the subject: "That is why we feel arbitration is the only solution to this problem," says Bolduc.

"On January 27th, unions proposed to take the conflict to arbitration, as per the Labour Code - that proposal still stands," says Bolduc.

"This lockout is not only cruel, it is useless," Bolduc says, "Quebecor management has created conflict in the workplace and have broken an historic trust between this employer and its workers."

While actions take place in Quebec City, the CUPE continues a cross-Canada tour with two of the 252 rank and file members who have been locked-out since last April.

The next stop on the national tour is Vancouver, British Columbia on April 16th, 2008, followed by Winnipeg, Charlottetown, St. John's, and Niagara Falls. The tour will end at the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) convention taking place from May 26 to May 28 at the Toronto Convention Centre.

Complete background on the conflict: cupe.ca/journaldequebec