Newhouse ... joining the lemmings? Or something else? Or just Newark?

Newhouse is throwing major cash into the online division -- especially in sports.
Please, let them throw some into design and content.

 

You're very likely right in that the online division has its own version of the pledge. But the pledge the newspaper division has specifies you're guaranteed a job as long as you behave yourself and the paper continues to print as a daily.

 

Didn't they violate the pledge when they offered buyouts to everybody in Newark a few years ago?

 

Nah, that would be leaving voluntarily.

 

Although I heard a few people were advised they should take the buyout, even if they didn't want to.

 

Care to add more info on that?

 

Not at this time.

 

I don't know that this Pledge letter was trying to establish that the online division is not protected by the "pledge," so much as it was trying to make clear that if the paper ceases to publish as a seven-day newsprint daily, the pledge protection in the newsroom and elsewhere also ceases.

The author is suggesting that after losing millions the last couple of years and projecting to lose millions again this year, he has a plan that will put SL into the black in 2009. Seems to me that the only ways to erase such a deficit in a year's time would be to erase most of the newshole, go online exclusive with at least some of the content, and erase a number of the drones.

A friend in Syracuse says Newhouse is in the process of redesigning its web sites into a single design for all of its papers, but he didn't say anything about putting additional money into Sports. If you look at their web sites, it seems they all do what they do with newspaper staffers. It seems the only real technical upgrade they did was a couple years back when they automated their high school results pages, which are pretty good.

 

They haven't already had this for a decade?

 

Yes -- the same cookie-cutter design for all of its regional websites. All the papers in a region fall under the region's website (nj.com, cleveland.com, etc.) the individual papers don't have their unique presence on the web, they're all part of the umbrella site.

 

Meant that they are giving the web site a new design, not that they are redesigning them to be the same. They already were the same, obviously.

 

That's not the same thing, right?