Huntsville Times buyouts

As someone who knows both parties, you couldn't be more wrong.

Said "special friend" works for a theatre.

I know facts never got in the way of good gossip before on SJ, but quit lying about a situation you obviously don't have firsthand knowledge of.

 

79 newsroom staffers for a 50K paper does seem like a lot. 29 at a 40K paper? Ouch.

 

If it's who I'm thinking of, I am floored they are asking him to stay.

 

Via the PD pipeline, here's the final numbers about their buyouts: Fifty were sought, they got 68. Sixty-seven have been accepted, one person still in limbo due to lack of available bodies for a planned redesign.

Newsroom's losing 19 (now down to 56 or 57).

Sports loses three: a desker, Outdoors guy and a prep guy. The Sports Editor's adding oversight of the depleted news layout desk to his duties - read into that what you want.

 

One wasn't accepted out of 68?

That sucks.

 

TIMES, HUNTSVILLE (MADISON CO.) SAT M DLY 50,774
TIMES, HUNTSVILLE (MADISON CO.) AVG M (M-F) DLY 50,998
TIMES, HUNTSVILLE (MADISON CO.) SUN DLY 71,032

This newspaper has a newsroom staff of 56 or 57 (down from 75 or 76)?

Wow.

 

Is there a typical rule of thumb for newsroom size (i.e. one newsroom employee for every 1K circulation)?

 

There used to be.

Now?

Fuhgettaboutit!

 

MAJOR BUMP.

My source tells me the second round of buyouts, which wrapped up this week, has gutted The H-Times even more.

The Sports Department, which less than a decade ago had 13 full-time employees, is down to 6: Two deskers who don't write, the previously mentioned McCarter, a prep editor, a small college writer and Bryant, who has returned as "interim" Sports Editor after the previous guy left via buyout.

There is now one copy editor in the newsroom after two others took/were told to take the second buyout (he says it was approximately one-third of what folks were offered in early 2009).

They've abandoned coverage of all outlying counties outside whatever county Huntsville is in.

They're also about to lose their best News writer, who I'm told produces more copy than anyone at that paper.

There are 44 or 45 newsroom employees, down from 75 or 76 in January '09.

Brutal!

 

One copy editor for a 50,000-plus circ paper?

 

That's how I've always understood it.

 

McCarter isn't full time in sports anymore. He still does some sports columns, but he's also doing features and columns for news half the time, too.

There are probably a few from the north Alabama area on here, and they may or may not agree with this, but from a little distance away, it seems as if Decatur is the perfect example of the benefits of private, local ownership in the newspaper business.

It would appear that if Decatur continues to play things as it has that it will own pretty much all territory north of Cullman. It already has the Decatur area wrapped up, and it recently purchased Florence. Both areas get Huntsville TV, so really, Decatur has a lock on ad revenues west of Huntsville. With the Times dying like a fish on a dock, and with Decatur growing in circulation -- yeah, imagine that -- you would have to think that it won't be long before it can start to slice away at some of the areas once dominated by Huntsville, such as the very wealthy Madison area.

Again, maybe I'm wrong, but the secret to success here at least seems to be that when times got tough for everybody, Decatur had room to maneuver. It could alter rates, make local deals, set up trades with other papers and generally do a variety of things that big, clunky, corporate-owned papers couldn't. I know at my place, the sales folks pretty much quit trying because it was pointless to continue to try to sell the same spots at the same rates to people who obviously couldn't afford it. Some businesses might've been willing to give a little money, but there was no room to make deals under the corporate guidelines. I would assume some of the same shit happened at Huntsville and all across the Newhouse chain.

I think it's proof that newspapers -- maybe not so much the printed product, but the content -- remains valuable, no matter how many jackasses attempt to tell you that the paper is dead.