The McClatchy Co., who owns The News Tribune, is laying off 10% of their work force, which works out to be about 1,400 jobs nationwide. Here's their stock ticker on Google which links to all the wire coverage.
I don't know the specifics of what this means for Tribune, of course, but I feel for the workers who have to worry about their jobs now.
I think it's worth pointing out that most likely the Tribune--as an individual paper--is probably profitable. The problem is the debt of their parent company. The McClatchy Co has $1 billion in debt, and it was downgraded by Moody's to Ba2 earlier this year (a "junk" debt rating, as I understand the term).
And paying off the debt got harder last year. Newspapers have been on the bad end of the subprime market, having lost a bunch of real estate listings and advertising (not to mention a general downturn in advertising dollars spent).
McClatchy is going to have to haul themselves out of debt before they can effectively manage and steward the 30 daily papers it owns. Otherwise the transition into the Internet age is going to be even more painful.
10% is a lot of cuts ... I wish everyone there the best.
AFTERNOON UPDATE: The Tribune put out a statement about the staff reduction on their site. They will be cutting 13% of staff, or 84 positions. The newsroom will be cut by less than 10%. They will also coordinate more advertising and circulation with The Olympian, another McClatchy paper.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Hey I heard about that on NPR this moring. They didn't mention the news tribune when they rambled the string of newspapers they owned though.
Maybe we can get a group of local citizens to buy the TNT and put the "Tacoma back in the "TNT."
The TNT has been quietly outsourcing local advertising display and online advertising to India along with their call center.
McClatchy, who owns the News Tribune and a sizable stake in the Seattle Times as well; have been sending their newspaper advertising oversees for about a year and are very tight lipped about outsourcing the Tribune's local advertising in fear of suffering further damage to their credibility with local merchants or losing more local advertising revenue.
Piper - Former Sr. Designer
Let's not forget that the Trib also outsourced it's customer service to the Philippines earlier this year. Missing paper? Just ask the kindly CSR on the other end of the line how's the weather in Manila.
One more thing to note... McClatchy bought KnightRidder last year, taking on their debt as well as failing publications. One more cog in the machine of their spiral downwards...
Based on what I'm hearing (and seeing here), the TNT deserves to die. There's just no place for socialists in American media anyways.
Post a Comment