San Jose update

San Jose to cut 40 newsroom jobs

Lean Dean strikes again!


SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - The San Jose Mercury News plans to cut its newsroom staff by about 17 percent next month as readers and advertising dollars migrate to the Internet, the paper's new executive editor said Tuesday.

The newspaper plans to eliminate about 40 of the editorial department's 240 full-time positions beginning July 2, Carole Leigh Hutton, the paper's executive editor and vice president, told staff members during an afternoon meeting.

Management has not yet decided who will be laid off, and the number of people to lose their jobs will likely be less than 40 because a few already planned on leaving before the cuts were announced, Hutton said. No buyouts are being offered.

The cuts, which had been anticipated, will be completed by July 16. Under the paper's agreement with the San Jose Newspaper Guild, management has to consider employees' qualifications, competency, ability to do available work, and seniority in determining who gets laid off, Hutton said.

"It's a business decision. It's a difficult thing to do," Hutton said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We value the work of these people. We're not laying off poor performers. We're laying off journalists that are a key part of our organization."

The new round of cutbacks will be the third for the Mercury News newsroom in less than two years. The paper, which has a paid weekday circulation of 230,870, cut 52 people from its newsroom staff through buyouts in November 2005 and laid off 15 people in December 2006, according to the Newspaper Guild.

Last month, the paper owned by MediaNews Group Inc. also lost Executive Editor Susan Goldberg, who left to become editor of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper.

Sylvia Ulloa, the guild president and a designer in the Mercury News' features department, said the latest cuts will be "bigger than an economic loss" for San Jose and surrounding communities because fewer journalists would be covering local news.

"This is a loss that the community is going to feel," she said. "We're not going to have the newspaper we have today."

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle, which has a weekday circulation of 386,564, is also bracing for a round of deep newsroom job cuts. The newspaper, owned by Hearst Corp., said last month it plans to reduce its 400-person newsroom staff by about one-fourth unless jobs could be eliminated through buyouts and retirement incentives.

Two weeks later, Managing Editor Robert Rosenthal announced he was stepping down.

 

Story's on the wire.

You're right.

Fuck.

 

Mercury News sports has survived relatively intact through the first rounds of cuts. (And I emphasize, that's only relative.) But I understand now that sports could get cut deeply.

 

Considering Singleton already owns the CC Times and the the Alameda Group. I'm pretty sure the number of papers with regular beat writers in the Bay Area have gone from up to 6 per sport to about 2.


And I don't understand the need to blame the Internet - web pages need content too. And where the hell is the online advertising?

 

What's scary is that if the Bay Area is considered at the forefront of technology in this country, are multiple series of layoffs the next step everywhere else?

 

DanOregon is correct.

But those cuts have already been made.

 

That's 107 jobs in a little over 18 months...

Dean is an amazing individual.. of course, I've felt that way since he shuttered my paper 13 years ago -- damn near to the day, come to think of it.

 

In a matter of months, San Fran has gone from having one of the best newspaper markets in the country (save for the SF Fishwrap, but that's just me) to one of the worst.

Thanks, Lean Dean!

 

And its not just newspapers. Without as many newspaper stories to rip off, radio and television news will suffer as well.

 

You are so right. Sports talk radio shows in our state often being with a host saying, "Did you see the LOCAL FISHWRAPPER this morning? Well, they're reporting..."

 

Fishwrapper?