Small papers vs. big metros

[budcrew08]

Seeing all the layoff threads are ridiculously depressing, but there's one thing I've noticed in just about all of them: They are all big metro or semi-metro papers. Papers with 75, 100, 200K circ.

You don't see this as much for smaller papers (circ 25K or less). Is this just the obvious 'not as many people, so you don't have to lay off as many?'

Or could it be that small papers are already down to bare bones and can't cut anymore?

Serious answers, please.

 

[SportsDude]

Seeing all the layoff threads are ridiculously depressing, but there's one thing I've noticed in just about all of them: They are all big metro or semi-metro papers. Papers with 75, 100, 200K circ.

You don't see this as much for smaller papers (circ 25K or less). Is this just the obvious 'not as many people, so you don't have to lay off as many?'

Or could it be that small papers are already down to bare bones and can't cut anymore?

Serious answers, please.

I'm at a small daily and we've cut one reporter position in the last two years and we have no photographer, which was dropped seven or eight years ago. We have a staff of less than 10, so we are pretty bare bones. We have any more layoffs, I think we cease to be an entity.

Living in Ohio, the only way most of the small dailies around here could cut anymore is if they completely folded. My paper, one sports writer position has fallen from $26,000 to $19,000 in ten years.

At that level you aren't looking for talent, just any sort of competence.

 

[crimsonace]

Many small papers' staffs are pretty heavily cut to the bone anyway. They went through their big rounds of layoffs 4-5 years ago in my area (Central Indiana), when Paxton & CNHI bought a lot of non-union family-owned papers.

 

[Pete Incaviglia]

Or could it be that small papers are already down to bare bones and can't cut anymore?

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Our joint is ridiculously understaffed. We're a 20K daily about an hour outside a major, major market.

 

[budcrew08]

Or could it be that small papers are already down to bare bones and can't cut anymore?

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Our joint is ridiculously understaffed. We're a 20K daily about an hour outside a major, major market.

I think we are too... We have 10 12 staff total. I don't think you could do it with less. 8,500 circ for us.
EDIT: Forgot photog and our newsroom assistant. Just counted editors and reporters.

 

[SCEditor]

I'm at a 16K daily. We have 19 full-time positions, although we currently have three open (two deskers and a clerk) that are going to be filled. In the last year, we've added a part-time photographer who will probably be full time before the end of the summer. Our advantage is that we're family owned, and our publisher is happy to turn a reasonable profit, not an absurd 25-30 percent. If we ever got bought by a big company, and I doubt that will happen since the publisher's daughter will likely take over, any company would come in here and start slicing jobs.

 

[Pete Incaviglia]

Or could it be that small papers are already down to bare bones and can't cut anymore?

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Our joint is ridiculously understaffed. We're a 20K daily about an hour outside a major, major market.

I think we are too... We have 10 staff total. I don't think you could do it with less. 8,500 circ for us.

Nine reporters, two photogs, three copy editors, a sports editor and an opinions page editor make up the unionized positions. There are four editors (night, city, web, managing) that make up management.

That's our newsroom.

 

[times38]

having worked at several small dailies and non-dailies, what seems to be happening the most with them is just not filling positions again when people leave until you get to a point of having the absolute minimum amount of people you can have and still put out a product.

 

[TheS]

I'm at a 26K daily, and we had layoffs in March — four in the newsroom, 15 total in the company.

 

[UPChip]

I'm at a 10K circ, 6-day daily. Our sports staff is 2 full, 1 part-time, and the part-time can't take pictures or build pages. So, I think I'm safer than most. Our entire newsroom staff is four editors (chief, managing, lifestyles and sports), a layout guru, a photographer, four reporters and the sports staff.

Another paper in our group (same size) is just two full-timers in sports, and because there's a dearth of talent in our region, they've been looking for a number two sports guy for two months. The other two in our group have D-2 colleges, so they have three full-timers on staff.

I'd argue a third way to the original question: for small-staff papers such as ours, the number of cuts you could make and still be viable doesn't save enough money to make them worthwhile.

 

[Mooninite]

Work at a paper between 20-25K 6 days a week and haven't had a layoff in the 13 years I've been here. In fact, they have actually added a copy editor, a couple of reporters and an online editor since I've been here.

We have 10-1/2 reporters (one shared with sister paper), 7 editors and a designer on the news side. Sports we an SE and 3 full-timers and a part-timer with no stringers. We're family-owned (2 dailies) and starting to feel the pinch a little bit.

 

[pseudo]

Or could it be that small papers are already down to bare bones and can't cut anymore?

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Our joint is ridiculously understaffed. We're a 20K daily about an hour outside a major, major market.

What he said. Two small-town dailies here, privately owned since 2001 or thereabouts. The 15k didn't replace their main preps guy when he moved out of the area last fall, which left three full-timers to cover NFL and D-1 hoops beats plus approximately 30 high schools (with another writer picking up home games for the regional NHL team). The 12k doesn't print on Sunday, uses wire for everything but preps, and gets by with two.

Those numbers include both SEs, of course. Copy desk? See above. If readers wonder why their high school's game rates only a paragraph in a roundup? See above.

 

[Shoeless Joe]

I work for a 16K daily. I may be whistling past the graveyard here, but I truly believe that papers in this size range that provide a community service will survive.

Mom and granny aren't going to read about little Johnny on ESPN.com, so as long as there is a market for prep coverage and other local-centric (not hyperlocal, I hate that ****) focuses, we will have a market and in turn a job.

We are next door neighbors to a fairly good sized paper (35-40K I think) and they don't do half the prep coverage we do with twice the people. We have had many calls over the years from their frustrated subscribers asking if we would cover their county's border schools the same way we do ours. They don't cover their local minor league team which plays less than two miles from their office.

That's why I think smaller papers that provide something readers can't get otherwise will be OK in the long run.

 

[UPChip]

The problem you run into with that approach is that I think you sacrifice 100 potential readers for getting 10 guaranteed readers. Grandma and grandpa love reading about little Muffy's 75 (for nine holes) at the Division 4 girls' golf practice meet yesterday, but the 25-year-old young professional, the customer you want to make for life, or at least for a subscription term, doesn't give a crap. He'd rather read how the Pistons did last night.

 

[SportsDude]

The problem you run into with that approach is that I think you sacrifice 100 potential readers for getting 10 guaranteed readers. Grandma and grandpa love reading about little Muffy's 75 (for nine holes) at the Division 4 girls' golf practice meet yesterday, but the 25-year-old young professional, the customer you want to make for life, or at least for a subscription term, doesn't give a crap. He'd rather read how the Pistons did last night.

That's the key - balancing both. We're lucky, we have a local football team people are absolutely crazy about. I'm talking Permian levels here. But at the same time, the parents think every non-league soccer game 50 miles away should be covered and the old-timers are pissed when golf scores knock off the MLB round up.

 

[Dan Hickling]

don't forget...Grandma and Grandpa aren't going to be around to sustain the product for very long...what readers will replace them?

 

[toivo99]

The problem you run into with that approach is that I think you sacrifice 100 potential readers for getting 10 guaranteed readers. Grandma and grandpa love reading about little Muffy's 75 (for nine holes) at the Division 4 girls' golf practice meet yesterday, but the 25-year-old young professional, the customer you want to make for life, or at least for a subscription term, doesn't give a crap. He'd rather read how the Pistons did last night.

"Little Muffy?" Nice.

But in many of these rural areas, there aren't that many 25-year-old professionals. Just working people whose families have been in town for three generations...

 

[Tarheel316]

I'm the SE of a 10K daily (no Sunday paper). We have two in sports, 13 total in the newsroom. We have lost 1.5 positions in the last year. I now sometimes shoot photos but that is OK with me. No way I would go to a big daily to just to get a "buyout" some day.

 

[First Inning]

All I have to do is look around the room to see how smaller my paper is. A year ago, we had two weeklies working out of our office. One publisher, one editor, one designer, two ad reps. My paper had three news reporters and myself in sports. The other weekly had two writers. The company ran three other weeklies out of another office. Year later, two of the other weeklies merged into one. The second one run out of our office is no longer published and we have two news writers and me still, thankfully.

 

[Hustle]

I don't know if our staff is beefed up because of the size of our county (200K), but we're right around 20K circ with the following: 6 FT in sports (SE, design guy/ASE, 4 reporters; once was 7); 2 photogs (once was 6); 4 news copy eds/designers (once was 5, maybe 6); 2 features; 7 news reporters (one left within the past month); online content coordinator; 1 community/general newsroom (plus 1 PTer who essentially works FT hours). Editors/management: exec., county (retiring next week), city, editorial page, sports, features.

We've always been blessed to have a pretty big sports staff for our size, though the dramatic reduction in photo has been a big concern.

Then again, I wonder if the beancounters see a lot of fat that could be trimmed.