Over 100 accept Dallas buyouts

Newsroom buyouts may cut Dallas paper's staff by 20 percent

It will be a big story at The Dallas Morning News, but you won't find it on the front page.

On Sept. 14, the paper is expected to announce that more than 100 of 580 newsroom staff members have accepted severance packages, shrinking the size of the newsroom by roughly 20 percent. It is not yet official that all the buyout applications will be accepted, but Robert W. Mong Jr., the editor, said that managers would try to accommodate everyone who had applied.

The last few years have not been kind to The Morning News or to its owner, the Belo Corporation, based in Dallas. While the paper is still profitable, in the last five years there have been two rounds of layoffs, and Belo acknowledged in 2004 that the paper had been overstating its circulation by 9 percent daily and 13 percent on Sunday.

So far, the staff has responded to the impending buyouts with a mix of fury and resignation. An anonymous Morning News staffer started a blog, newsbuyout.blogspot.com, to chronicle news of the buyouts.

Source: Julie Bosman. The New York Times via SPJ Press Notes