How long until we see ....

Sunday papers are struggling. There was a piece in E&P a few years ago that said people don't have time for mammoth Sunday papers. I would see them dying before the daily goes. The Saturday paper is a regional thing -- weak in some parts of the country, relatively strong and packed with ads in others.

 

To answer your question, Buck...
Unfortunately, over the last decade I know more about this stuff than I ever cared to know.
The general rule is 60 to 100 (or a division/multiple of 3 to 5).
If an employee makes $60k, it generally costs the company $100k with 401k compensation, medical input, life input and workers' comp. input added to the salary.
Hope that makes sense.

As for a business, payroll shouldn't make more than 36-40%. Of course, that number fluctuates greatly depending on the incoming and outgoing numbers.

 

Cool, thanks. That's the number I'm wondering about.

In the scenario presented above, yeah, you could get rid of a Saturday paper and lay off, say, four people. But as we all know, if you keep cutting people -- it doesn't matter how many other expenses you have if there's no one there to put out the product. And I hear about a lot fewer cost-cutting moves (some papers are going to a smaller web, etc.) that don't involve layoffs than about those that do.

So I just wonder if cutting the costs of other expenses -- expenses that maybe take up more space on the ledger sheet, and/or don't involve ruining people's lives -- could help defray so many layoffs. Maybe that's naive. Just brainstorming out loud.

 

Let's see. Where can we cut?

-- Trimming the web down saves paper, but the one-time costs to do it (reconfiguring the press, etc.) run into the low-to-mid seven figures. Most places don't see cost savings from a web-width cutdown for about 18 months. Then if you add pages back to recoup the space, well, there goes that savings.

-- The travel budget could be cut significantly, if it hasn't already. But then you're back to offering content that everybody else already has.

-- Or go all-local and drop that costly AP service. That might save one FTE, but at what cost to the product?

-- You can not buy that new computer system this year. Or next year. Or next year. Or next year. But you absorb unpredictable costs associated with an antiquated system (maintaining old computers, occasional overtime for delivery drivers when the paper comes out late after yet another crash, etc.) And if that old system is your advertising or circulation system, you take the risk of losing crucial financial data, which would really be painful for the bottom line.

After people and newsprint, there aren't many things that take up more space on the ledger sheet.

If you drop the Saturday paper, maybe you save enough money in newsprint and infrastructure (utilities, fuel, etc.) that you don't have to lay off four people.

 

Yeah, except you further diminish your product.
Then, the next year when the forcasted revenue falls short, they will lay off those four employees anyhow.
The "let's-keep-giving-'em-less" thought process has served us so well.

 

The Sunday paper as constructed now, yes. But I wonder if you go the weekly print route, whether you try to upgrade the product physically and content-wise to produce something that can last a full week, like a magazine. I think, eventually, a weekly edition would do better than the Sunday edition of a daily paper.

 

They may not read it, but every woman I've ever known will get a Sunday paper most weeks for the ads.

 

I'll second that. I don't think the Mrs. has ever read a thing I've written in the 6 1/2 years we've been together, but she wants every Sunday paper.

 

If a paper is considering dropping a full day from the week, I'd seriously doubt that high school sports is their biggest concern.

By the way, here's another cost-cutting tip: no color. All grayscale.

 

I've lobbied for a Saturday paper for years to no avail. Our readership is content with getting the score elsewhere and waiting for Sunday for the in-depth story.

Never mind that three pages of two-day-old coverage takes away from the important stuff that happens on Saturday. Like, oh say, college football ....

 

The plan inside the offices of many publishers is: build up the Web site to a point where it's a can't miss vehicle for the newspaper's news. Then start paring back print editions. First maybe a Saturday or a Monday, to the point where they're printing four days a week. This isn't so much bad news for reporters, because in theory, they're generating content for the Web. It is bad news for deskers, some who will have to re-invent themselves or learn new skills to stay employed.

 

Silver Charm is right. The focus is on the Web. People with kids playing high school football are surely savvy enough to go to the web on Saturday morning. It also would be a great way to increase page views on the weekend, which as I understand it lag behind daily views because people look at the Web in their cubicles when they're supposed to be working.

If the total demise of print newspapers is inevitable -- and it probably is -- then it just figures that the print product will die in stages and not all at once.