Dear Jacksonville

A letter from the publisher sent yesterday, received via The Pipeline:

Dear Folks,

I am writing you today with a heavy heart. The economy has worsened and so has our advertising revenue. Our business is being so severely impacted by the dramatic downturn in the economy that we simply can’t afford to employ the same number of people. We are being forced to do some job eliminations across the company.

Several weeks ago, I wrote to you and explained what was happening to our parent company and many other businesses as a result of the problems in the credit markets. Banks, retailers, restaurants, auto dealers, Realtors, home builders, service businesses, entertainment businesses, etc., are being affected profoundly by what is going on in the economy, and some are going out of business. Just last week, the Christian Science Monitor, a national newspaper published for more than 100 years, stopped publishing a print edition and converted to online-only. All media companies, including television, radio, magazines, yellow pages and outdoor are suffering as much as we are, or more. Unfortunately, the forecast is that we will be in this economic upheaval for another year or more.

I want you to know that we did not arrive at a decision to eliminate jobs until we had thoroughly examined and analyzed all of our business operations and all of our products to determine ways to reduce costs first. We have cut off circulation copies in far-flung areas, reorganized distribution operations, closed or scaled back offices, reduced the frequency of distribution of some of our products, reduced the quantity of copies printed and reduced the operating budgets of every department at the Times-Union. Many departments are going through a complete reorganization in an effort to respond quickly to a changing market landscape

It is painful to eliminate jobs but we simply have no choice. We have two major expenses – paper and people – and we have saved about all the newsprint we can. So we have to turn to our only alternative, to reduce our employment in keeping with the volume and demands of our business. We don’t have as many ads or as many pages, and we simply can’t afford the larger workforce that produced the larger product.

Many of the people who are leaving us have been here a long time and served The Times-Union well. We give them our thanks, gratitude and best wishes as they move on to the next phase of their lives and we will do anything we can to help them. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers. Those of us who remain must rededicate ourselves to our customers and our community as we work our way through this very uncertain economy. Thank you for all you are doing for our company during these very difficult times.

Jim

 

More from The Pipeline:

Seven throughout the Jax organization got laid off today, including a bureau person and the editorial cartoonist. More coming tomorrow and more on Friday. Know nothing about sports yet.

An assistant city editor got the can today, and folks cheered him as he cleaned out his desk. I'm told more than a few tears were shed, too.

Great googly-moogly, not good.