The
Seattle Times Cuts 86 Jobs – Associated Press, Jan. 9, 2008

[Actual layoffs total 31 people; 55 vacant positions won’t be filled. Most of the cuts are in circulation. Since the paper delivers The Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and the Financial Times to the Seattle area, we can assume this indicates broader circulation weakness. -Ed.]

Shrinking Union-Tribune: ‘Doing Less With Less’ – Voiceofsandiego.org, Jan. 7, 2008

Herald-Republic announces job cuts, expense trimming – Yakima Herald.com, Jan. 3, 2007

Quoting: Yakima Herald-Republic has laid off five employees, closed its Sunnyside bureau, and eliminated its zoned edition for the Lower Valley to trim expenses for 2008.

The Herald-Republic will leave several open positions unfilled, including one news reporter job. It will revamp its Spanish-language weekly, El Sol de Yakima, partly by outsourcing some page production to Mexico…”I don’t think it has to negatively affect the product,” [publisher] Shepard said. “Like any business, we can try and do as much or more with a few less folks.”

Sun-Times to cut costs; layoffs loom — chicagotribune.com, Dec. 15, 2007

[The Sun-Times had previously announced plans to cut $10 million in operating expenses, so this is a dramatically more ambitious goals. The CEO is quoted as saying, “We have to accept that the print advertising market may never again reach the levels of the past. We must scale our organization to meet that reality.” – Ed.]

How Garry Steckles can hang around – Chicago Reader Blogs, Jan. 9, 2008

[As the Chicago Sun-Times prepares to cut 30 editorial positions, staffers have come to focus on two employees who have recently been promoted to exempt positions and spared the threat of layoffs. Both are pals of EIC Michael Cooke, and speculation is rampant that that’s what saved them. Worse, this columnist claims, one is effectively a do-nothing consultant. -Ed.]

Cuts at Yakima, Bremerton and byline strike in Maine – Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild Blog

The end of the year was a good time for newspaper insiders and critics alike to review a pretty terrible year and wonder what come next.

$23B zapped in news stock value – Reflections of a Newsosaur, Jan. 1, 2008
[Alan Mutter runs the numbers and concludes that US newspaper companies have lost 42% of their market value in the last three years, with the majority of that decline coming in 2007. He further suggests that Wall Street’s lack of confidence in newspaper stocks is an indication that investors don’t believe that newspaper executives know how to pull out of the tailspin. As usual, his analysis is well-researched and pointed. – Ed.]

Lee CEO Junck Optimistic About Newspaper Biz – Editor & Publisher, Dec. 31, 2007

[A newspaper CEO points proudly to a year in which her company’s financial performance sucked less than that of its competitors’. -Ed.]

Enduring Values in a Time of Change – washingtonpost.com, Dec. 30, 2007

[The Washington Post’s ombudsman looks on the bright side. Deborah Howell starts by detailing the declines in circulation and revenue at the paper, but finishes by describing the shift in attitude about the Web that’s occurred among the reportorial staff. While it’s clear that some are adapting to the new online channels out of self-preservation, Howell clearly believes that most of the staff is embracing new media and trying to reinvent the paper. -Ed.]

‘Cincinnati Post’ Closes, Other Newspapers Outsource To India – MediaPost, Dec. 31, 2007

Quoting: “The Miami Herald announced Thursday that it is outsourcing some advertising production tasks to India as a cost-cutting measure, beginning in January. The New Delhi firm Mindworks will handle copy editing and design for special advertising sections, including a weekly community section covering Broward County. So far, the move hasn’t resulted in any layoffs in the paper’s Florida offices. However, Herald executives say the outsourcing is a test–implying that some jobs could go to India if it proves successful.

“The Miami Herald is actually the second newspaper owned by the McClatchy Co. to outsource to India. At the beginning of December, The Sacramento Bee also said it would experiment with outsourcing some ad production tasks.”

[This really isn’t surprising. Many functions associated with running a daily newspaper can be managed remotely, and why pay $25/hour to someone in the US when you can get the job done for $5/hour overseas? These early outsourcing experiments have sparked considerable teeth-gnashing in the newspaper industry, which is interesting, considering that creative cost-cutting initiatives like these are clearly needed. – Ed.]

Old and new clash in a struggle for dominance – The Boston Globe, Dec. 30, 2007
[A Globe columnist sums up the rough year that mainstream media has had and asks what’s next. “As old embraces new, some fear that the basic function of old media – watchdog, investigator, pillar of democracy – will be lost in a sea of microtargeting and snark,” she says. It’s an interesting observation, because blogging is, in many respects, the epitome of democracy and communities have proven to be pretty good watchdogs when they’re given a forum to talk about what they see. As for the investigator role, we’re still working out how to sustain that valuable function in the new world. Sending 2,500 reporters to cover the Iowa caucuses was not a great PR move for the newspaper industry. -Ed.]

Album Sales Plunge, Music Biz Rethinks – Media Post, Jan. 4, 2008
[The topic isn’t newspapers here, but the dynamics that are killing the music industry are meaningful to any mainstream media business. Record companies have long resisted buyers’ demands that they provide more flexible means to acquire their products. They’ve stubbornly refused, insisting that consumers buy an entire album, even if they only want to listen to one song. So customers have stopped buying, and now the recording industry is paying the price. Album sales are off a stunning 15% year-over-year, continuing a long-term decline. A desperate industry is forced to resort to desperate measures, but their reputation is so tattered that it’s questionable whether customers will give them another chance. This is a harsh lesson of the digital media age. -Ed.]

There are signs that the industry is trying to reinvent itself, or at least complain more vociferously about the forces that are marginalizing it.

What’s Black & White And Spread All Over? – MediaPost, Dec. 10, 2007
[A study commissioned by the newspaper industry finds that newspaper readers are more likely to be influencers than non-readers. The results really aren’t surprising. In percentage terms, twice as many people over the age of 60 read daily newspapers as under the age of 30. Given that newspaper readership increases with age, it’s not too much of a stretch to believe that older people would be more influential in purchasing decisions than kids. You can also assume that people who can afford a subscription to a newspaper are somewhat more affluent than those who rely solely on the Web. It’s hard to tell; the rather skimpy 10-slide presentation on the NNN’s site gives no demographic breakdown. – Ed.]

Unfettered ‘citizen journalism’ too risky, ajc.com, Dec. 13, 2007
[The author calls for “citizen journalism” to be regulated and/or certified. The scenarios he outlines to support his case are valid. Unfortunately, professional journalists aren’t licensed or certified, so the idea that ordinary citizens should be subjected to some kind of review process rings pretty hollow. -Ed.]

Local Papers’ Web Scramble – WSJ.com, Dec. 18, 2007
[Newspapers are rapidly losing market share in the one market in which they should have a significant edge: local advertising. In 2007, for the first time, pure-play Web companies had a larger share of local advertising than newspapers. In just three years, newspapers’ overall share of that market is down from 44% to 33.4%. This is largely newspapers’ own fault. Instead of investing in local sales staff over the last decade, they have mainly focused on trying to sell more high-margin national display advertising. Meanwhile, pure-play Web companies swooped in and took their market share. -Ed.]

The Kentucky Post closed the books on a 126-year-old print heritage at the end of 2007. To print journalists, the front page headline of “-30-” is familiar. It’s the line traditionally used to denote the end of a story. The Business Courier of Cincinnati has more.