Decatur, Florence Ala. cuts

Sources tell me today that Florence loses its magazines editor and its courts/franklin county reporter who had been reporting extensively on immigration issues in that county which has one of the state's largest hispanic communities. She took over courts when the previous reporter took a job outside the industry and was not replaced.
the magazines were good revenue producers, including a summer Explore issue that was 148-page glossy that was a quality product.
Decatur cut its Lawrence County reporter.
Furloughs also were announced. everybody has to take a week before the end of the year and one again in the first half to 2013.
The magazine editor stays until the end of the year; the news reporter is gone in Nov.
These cuts don't sound like a lot, but the TD newsroom has been gutted in recent years.

 

I feel terrible for my friends and former colleagues in Florence and Decatur.

Florence was a solid and quite profitable news operation that's being run very poorly now - an example of an ownership looking for a flat spot to crash the plane instead of fighting to keep it in the air.

The next shoe to drop will surely be some cutback of publication dates. As soon as Huntsville did that, it seemed inevitable.

 

I'm hearing that among the magazines, Explore will stay and the revenue producing Shoals Woman magazine will be cut back to fewer editions. Of course, nobody has said who will coordinate and produce those magazines.
The theory among TD employees is that that TimesDaily continues to turn a profit and the Decatur Daily does not.

 

Never good news to hear.
The Florence and Decatur newsrooms are filled with dedicated, talented journalists, and to hear that any of them are losing a job saddens me deeply.

 

Cuts suck.
Cuts suck worse when good people lose jobs and others are untouchable no matter their performance, productivity or ability to work and play well with others.

 

Jesus. This sucks. Hard.

So, they're dumping the magazine editor while still publishing magazines? Savvy.

Lots of great people in the Florence newsroom. I hope this is as bad as it gets, although I fear I'm wrong.

Ugh.

 

Yeah, Ryan, interesting scenarios regarding the magazines. I've been at more than one place where the bosses were high on the magazine thing. Apparently brought in a fair chunk of change. OK fine. Then just shutter the daily and just do mags if that's the business you want to be in.

 

I don't have a problem with a newspaper publishing a magazine. But I do have a problem with that newspaper dumping the magazine editor and laying that responsibility on the people who remain. Most of those people are already taking on more than they should have to. Now, they'll have to deal with the magazine, too.

 

Part of the problem in that specific (Florence) market was/is that the magazines, while well done, never did much other than cannibalize advertising from the daily. So you diminish your core product while trying to extend your reach. And while the TimesDaily was (essentially) the only newspaper product in town , there were other magazine options in the North Alabama market, some of which were frankly more accomplished.

 

And that's fine. You obviously know more about that specific market than I do. I'm just saying that a newspaper that happens to also publish a magazine isn't all that unheard of. Mark's comment that you shouldn't do both is ridiculous. That's all I was pointing out. Well, that and how the staffers at the TD will likely be expected to pick up the slack, which is shitty, but not all that surprising given the management there.

 

Oh, I agree. I chuckle everytime I see one of those memos that states "in addition to today's reduction in workforce, we are excited to announce a new monthly magazine focusing on .... " I always wonder how they expect that to get done.

 

Always heartening to see the big city competition scale back, then have your* paper run screaming from the opportunity.

* Metaphorically. I'm no longer in the business.