Is the Oregonian's other shoe about to drop?

Portland alt weekly site breaks it down:

http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-20836-black_and_white_and_red_all_over.html

Includes this:

 

That's brutal. And I believe the ideal situation there is to ask for volunteers (as was done at my place). But Bhatia took special note to say anyone volunteering for the layoffs could NOT be assured they were saving someone's job, which is really too bad. If you announce "we need to lose X number of people," you're often surprised at how many people are willing to be one of those lost, especially with a severance package. That typically goes a long way toward getting to the number and I don't know why the Oregonian didn't do it.

 

Yeah, we had our bloodletting here a little over a year ago, and there were two 60-ish reporters with 30-plus years of service each who were more than happy to take the 18 months of severance and year of benefits.

 

It will not have the same number of reporters.

 

At some other Advance papers, nobody was laid off, they just pressured you to take the buyout offer (threatening to close the paper if not enough people took it or if you stayed the paper could be sold and there's no guarantee you'd be retained at your current salary). In the case of my paper, nobody that took the buyout was brought back full-time. I can count on one hand the number of reporters that were brought back as part-timers. I need a couple of fingers from a second hand to count the number of deskers brought back part-time.

 

I think the Oregonian will end up with a 7 day paper, particularly if the Portlandians complain like the people from New Orleans complained.

Here's why: Portland prints Salem. Salem is still seven days, for now, so they aren't saving any money by having the presses off. All it really saves is three days of home delivery.

What this move really was is a salary dump. Get rid of the veterans and their higher end deals. Replace them with freelancers or 10 bucks an hour reporters.

You replace the three days with street tabs, or free throws, with a sports focus on Mondays. Neighborhoods on Tuesday and out on the weekend Thursday papers. Fill up the rest with wire and the odd smattering of local news and that's it.

They still print seven days a week, they just don't deliver three of those days.

 

Would you not have fewer press crews on the days the Oregonian is not printing?

 

Wasn't it more the realization of an "oops we screwed up and the Baton Rouge paper will come in and break-up our New Orelans monopoly" that caused the change of the New Orleans paper going back to 7 days?