Layoffs Coming to the Washington Times

That's a 2008 argument at best. By 2007 Tribune's profit margin had shunk to 12 percent (from the high 20s) . . . and this was BEFORE the economic collapse and BEFORE the company took on $13 billion of debt. By 2008 they could not service that debt. Companies making double-digit profits do not file for bankruptcy. Nor do they see their stock value drop from $91 to $17 (Gannett) or from $76 to $2 (McClatchy).

Newspaper ad revenue is about 40 percent of what it was 6 years ago.

Businesses do not lose 60 percent of their revenue --- and dropping --- without making cuts to the expenses. Let's say your laid-off employeee finds a job at 40 percent of his previous salary. Think HE's not cutting back his expenses? Perhaps not paying others for services he previously had done? Why should a business act any different?

And it has little to do with making sure the CEO gets paid. It has to do with making a profit at all . . . it has to do with paying down existing debt . . . it has do so (sometimes) with shareholders' demands . . . and it has to do with making the company attractive enough that in the event it needs to be sold that it CAN be sold and not just folded altogether.

Several years ago the L.A. Times could have been sold for $2 billion. Now ALL of Tribune's newspapers combined are worth only $600 million.

 

Are executives sharing the sacrifice?

 

One example, Cap'n: I think you'll find many fewer newspapers with circulations of less than 100,000 who have an editor and a managing editor than you did 10 years ago.

 

Ask any executive holding Gannett or McClatchy stock.

Ask the Managing Editor of the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale.

Oops, there hasn't been once since July 2008.

 

It's an insoluble dilemma. Cost control cannot be done at newspapers without damaging the product because your personnel ARE your product. It's such a labor-intensive enterprise. Online journalism is less labor-intensive, but it results in severe revenue control except at a few big sites whose main cost control is paying journalists next to nothing.
The Times is in a specially cleft stick. People like choice, and Washington COULD be a two newspaper/two written journalism entity city, but as my old alma mater has found out, it's tough to make money emphasizing ideological political journalism when your market does not share that ideology.

 

The fucked up part about all of this, and in many other places, is that these fourth quarter cuts come at Christmas time. Talk about unwanted presents.

 

If you believe top Gannett execs have sacrificed, you're an idiot. Editors are not executives, either.

http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-furloughs-helped-spur-4m-in.html

 

Gannett execs haven't sacrificed shit. Heck, the only time Dubow got less than a million dollar bonus was when he sat out 6 months because of back surgery. And he still got something like $800K that year for not working for six months.

 

Then obviously, the business is not going to be stronger than before. So the execs are either lying in their memos, or don't have a clue what the hell they are doing.

What we've been referring to are the stupid corporate-speak memos that come out from these execs that, on top of everything else, insult the intelligence of the workers. If I'm one of the people getting laid off, why should I give a damn if the company is going to be stronger once I'm laid off?

 

How about both?

 

I'll second this. It's depressing how many colleagues and friends I know in this business who were laid off in December, just so numbers looked better on a meaningless piece of paper.

For Moddy and everyone else at the Washington Times, I hope for the best.

 

It's all in how you look at it.

If the Daily Bugle lays off 25 percent of its newsroom, it's hard to imagine it being stronger than before.

But a Daily Bugle at 75 percent of its strength is much stronger than one that kept losing money, saw its stock price drop to $1 and eventually folded, sending 100 percent to the unemployment line.

There are many more execs at a place than the one CEO whose name everybody knows. Execs get fired all the time. Tribune's Vice President of Publishing was laid off a little over a year ago. If you're gonna claim that"THAT DOESN'T COUNT! THOSE GUYS STILL HAVE PLENTY OF MONEY TO LIVE ON!", then I don't know what to tell you. Not all sacrifices are created equal. But just because A is in a better position than B doesn't mean you can just dismiss A to suit your faulty belief that only the worker bees sacrifice.