Posted on 07/02/2008 2:45:11 PM PDT by BurbankKarl
The Los Angeles Times today announced plans to cut 250 positions across the company, including 150 positions in editorial, in a new effort to bring expenses into line with declining revenue. In a further cost-cutting step, the paper will reduce the number of pages it publishes each week by 15%.
"You all know the paradox we find ourselves in," Times Editor Russ Stanton said in a memo to the staff. "Thanks to the Internet, we have more readers for our great journalism than at any time in our history. But also thanks to the Internet, our advertisers have more choices, and we have less money."
He also noted that the poor economy had struck particularly hard at the California housing market, traditionally a robust source of advertising revenue for The Times.
The cuts reflect conditions across the newspaper industry, which is confronting sharply deteriorating print advertising revenues. Although online ad revenues are rising, they have not made up for the losses. Amid the current nationwide economic slowdown, the prospects are for continued revenue shrinkage through the end of this year.
Times Publisher David Hiller said the goal of the cuts was to "get to where we need to be for the long term. We want to get ahead of the economy that's been rolling down on us and get to a size that will be sustainable." He said the size of the reductions was predicated on the expectation that the economy would "bottom out and reach equilibrium" early next year. The editorial staff cuts will be among 250 positions cut across all departments of The Times, including circulation, marketing and advertising, Hiller said. Companywide employment will be about 3,000 after the reductions, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
July’s 1st round of layoffs
Now that warms the cockles of my heart!
Hey, when you’re making up the news from whole cloth, and uncritically publishing radicals’ press releases, why would you need news gatherers?
It is about time. When will they get the message that people want more than left wing propaganda? I drove past the building on the way from Church last Sunday and would not be upset if it were to disappear.
ROTFLMAO at these demise of the liberal press. So long communists.
they deserve it!
i’m tired of their hate bush journalism.
But how will they mske their phony-baloney polls?
The LA Times had a newsgathering staff?
Who knew?
Seems like they were just sitting there waiting for something to come in over the AP wire, or for some kid in a convenience stor to phone it in.
Their capabilities would seem to be hardly impaired.
ping
Yo G.D!!!
hahahahahahhahahahhahahhahahahhaahahhahhahahahhahahhaha
How many people does it take to pull stuff off the AP newswire and stick it into their stupid newspaper?
Maybe they can try to get a job at Starbucks ?
/s
If the LA Times keeps cutting pages and staff, pretty soon they will not have a paper to publish. Will the last person to leave the LA Times please turn out the lights.
Too late.
http://www.bizjournals.com/birmingham/stories/2008/06/30/daily22.html
Starbucks to close 600 stores
Yup.
” close 600 underperforming stores in the United States and lay off as many as 12,000 employees...”
BurbankKarl,
There is a GOD.
:-)
I’ve never been to a Starbuck’s and never will.
Nothing to see here, move along.
BARF!! What complete crap. The LAT has blatantly injected their leftist views into articles for years. Their "journalism" is a farce laden with DNC talking points................
This should only help their accuracy.
As a conservative male I sometimes have a hard time expressing my emotions. For instance happiness can be difficult. Bwahahahahahah, Guffaw, Snort, Bwahahahahahah! That wasn’t so bad after all.
Not enough.... they are still behind the curve.
Even better, the LAT have knowingly sub-contracted to several corrupt employers that hire many hundreds of illegal aliens to deliver their papers.
http://www.contentbridges.com/2008/07/call-it-frights.html
Call It Frightsizing
The news is out: Newspaper companies can no longer afford reporters and editors. Today’s L.A. Times announcement is the latest to catch a news cycle of public attention. As well it should. A 17% cut — 150 newsroom jobs — is an unnatural disaster. It’s the kind of news that shocks, if briefly. Because it is the L.A. Times, it’s more shocking nationally than last week’s cut at the Hartford Courant (25% or 58 newsroom jobs) and at the Baltimore Sun (about 20% or 55-60 jobs). All are Tribune-owned papers.
These cuts, and more at other Tribune papers, are a part of strategy, the new Tribune management tells us. It’s “rightsizing” its papers to meet the economic realities of the day.
“Rightsizing” is one of those words management slings about when it wants to make it seem like it’s making intelligent decisions in tough times. Sounds better than “panicking.”
To describe the current round of staff cuts, though, there’s a better word: Frightsizing. Munch_the_scream_2
Frightsizing means reckless cutting, hacking into one or both of the key elements of what news publishers will need to make it in the digital age. #1 is the newsroom — or shall we say, content production — staff. Content is what will make publishers money online, and as experienced, authoritative staff is lost, so will be lost some of the potential of what the new news company can be. #2 is the local sales staff, people who can grasp the out-sized sales/distribution opportunity of measurable, digital commerce and multiply publisher revenues. Frightsizing not only cuts deeply into near-term potential, it instills in the survivors fear and loathing, hardly qualities that win in hyper-competitive markets.
LAT Publisher David Hiller can talk about getting staff down to a “sustainable” size, but the truth is no one’s got any idea what sustainability looks like. With increasing forecasts that the US economy will stay in the doldrums into ‘09, publishers are really just bailing water as fast as they can. The leaks (in print circulation, in print ad revenues, in newsprint costs and in slowing online revenues) are all widening. So all publishers are now cutting rapidly, with newsprint finding its predicted fate as an adjunct to the Internet, rather than to the opposite fiction too long held onto by news execs.
Really, given their company structures, they have little choice. You can see the must-pay checklists in front of publishers:
* Operating costs, with staff as the biggest and newsprint and ink coming in second;
* Capital costs, as they struggle to modernize production systems to meet new multiple-platform realities — and still buy trucks to deliver the legacy product that still produces 90% of their revenues;
* Payments on debt;
* Dividend payouts to shareholders, payouts that most companies have increased (in the vain hope of satisfying investors) as their fortunes have declines;
* Funds to buy back a few shares here and there, again in vain hope of bolstering share price.
It’s a daunting list, and one that nobody can meet with today’s revenues. It wasn’t always this way. Recall that three years ago, the profit margin in the industry still stood at about 21%, a number lusted at by many other companies in many other industries. Most companies had some semblance of an opportunity to make a bold moves, halving that margin and creating a real strategic plan to make a transition into the digital age with their companies largely intact.
They could have made better decisions to play the transition. Instead the transition is now playing them.
Certainly, the New York Times, the Washington Post, McClatchy, Scripps, Gannett and Belo come to mind as companies that are trying hard not to panic, not to frightsize. The cuts at all those companies are real, but you have the sense that there’s an appreciation of retaining key assets.
Tribune, with its unconscionable $12 billion-plus debt, is the poster boy of frightsizing. Calling the new Tribune an employee-owned company is high parody, when those “owners” are being shown the door in massive numbers. You can place bets on whether the frightsized Tribune paper employees will outlast the real estate being shopped out beneath their feet. But for now, it’s a horror show without a Hollywood ending in sight.
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2008/07/reactions_to_cutting_back.php
Blog reactions to Times shrink plan
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/business/media/03paper.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin
L.A. Times Newsroom to Shrink by 150 Jobs
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117988445.html?categoryid=21&cs=1
L.A. Times to cut 250 positions
http://marccooper.com/hard-times/
Hard Times
http://www.tellzell.com/2008/07/axe-l.html
The Axe
http://dodgerthoughts.baseballtoaster.com/archives/1038995.html
The Times Drifts Toward a Coma
http://patterico.com/2008/07/02/bloodbath-looms-at-la-times/
Bloodbath Looms at L.A. Times
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/48825c64-46b1-4fa4-87f3-bf77e9055e85
“I’m Melting! I’m Melting!”
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 6:41 PM
http://dailypundit.com/?p=31138
Dumb…Well, You Know What
I do buy LA Times only on SUNDAY and I need cat litter paper LOL!
Sunday is where they put all sales for all the store in Sunday LA Liars
LA Times ?!?!?
Do they make clocks ?.........;o)
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