Poynter on newsrooom staff cuts

From Poynter Institute, June 12, 2007
By Rick Edmonds
The announcement of big newsroom staff cuts seems to be falling like acid rain these days. One hundred at the San Francisco Chronicle, including 10 high-level editors. Sixty at the Los Angeles Times. A rumored 60 more on the way at The (San Jose, Calif.) Mercury News, like the Times and Chronicle a paper twice slashed already.

Lost in the saga of the miserable metros is a more hopeful story. Smaller papers and the three big nationals are, by and large, holding staff steady and in some cases even growing slightly.

An analysis of the latest American Society of Newspaper Editors newsroom census, designed primarily to track diversity statistics and compiled at the end of 2006, shows this breakdown in overall staffing trends:

* All of the net losses are concentrated in about 90 papers ranging from 100,000 circulation up to the Los Angeles Times at 815,000-daily circulation. Papers reporting results at the end of 2005 as well as the end of 2006 were down by 711 full-time professional staffers for the year.

* Papers reporting both years in the 50,000 to 100,000 circulation range held numbers roughly even in 2006.

* Papers less than 50,000 were not analyzed individually, but my estimate is that they, too, stayed about even.

* The three national papers were reported to be up by 19 full-time news positions, with a small decrease at TheNew York Times, offset by small increases at TheWall Street Journal and USA Today.

Click on the headline to read the full article by By Rick Edmonds.