Wednesday - September 21, 2005

The NY Times Is Sinking

New York Times Cuts 500 Jobs, 4 Percent Of Work Force
NEW YORK (WNBC)

The New York Times Co. and two Philadelphia newspapers announced major job cuts Tuesday as the industry grapples with severe financial problems including weak advertising and circulation declines.  The Times said it would cut about 500 jobs, while the Philadelphia papers will eliminate a total of 100 jobs. The cuts at the Times represent about 4 percent of the company’s work force and will be made across the company, including about 45 jobs in the Times newsroom and 35 at The Boston Globe.

The Times also said its third-quarter earnings would come in well below Wall Street forecasts because of sluggish advertising trends and higher-than-expected costs from a previous round of job cuts in May, which resulted in 200 jobs being eliminated. McClatchy Co., a California-based newspaper publisher, also trimmed its earnings forecast Tuesday because of weaker-than-expected advertising. The Philadelphia Inquirer will cut its editorial staff 15 percent, from 500 to 425 people, while the Philadelphia Daily News will cut its editorial staff 19 percent, from 130 to 105. Both papers are owned by Knight Ridder Inc., the nation’s second-largest newspaper company.

The cuts come as the newspaper industry faces serious problems including slow advertising growth, long-term declines in circulation and a widespread shift by readers—especially younger ones—to online news sources. The Times said it expected 250 jobs at its main newspaper group to be affected, which includes the Times, the International Herald Tribune and the online operation of the Times. Of those job cuts, about 45 will come from the Times’ newsroom, the company said in a statement. Another 160 jobs will be cut from the Times’ New England operation, which includes The Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Boston.com. The company did not provide a breakdown of those job cuts other than to say that 35 newsroom jobs would be cut at The Boston Globe.

In a note to Times staffers, the Times’ chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and its CEO Janet Robinson called the new round of cuts “a painful process” but a necessary one given the “continued financial challenges and the cloudy economic outlook for the remainder of the year.” Sulzberger and Robinson said the company would manage the cuts “in such a way that we continue to provide our readers, users, listeners and viewers with journalism of the highest quality and that our operations function smoothly on a day-to-day basis.” Last week, Knight Ridder said its third-quarter earnings would fall about 20 percent because of declining ad sales, as well as higher interest expense and newsprint costs.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/21/2005 at 06:44 AM   
Filed Under: • Media-Bias •  
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