Wednesday, August 20, 2008
PD follows with buyout, hikes price to 75 cents
The Cleveland Plain Dealer extended a voluntary buyout offer to most of its 370 non-union office employees Tuesday as part of the daily's effort to reduce expenses in the wake of a newspaper-industry advertising slump. It comes a day after the newspaper raised its newsstand price from 50 cents to 75 cents
Workers offered the buyout, about a third of the paper's 1,200 employees, received a letter from Terry Egger, president and publisher. It went to newsroom managers, as well as employees in advertising, circulation and other departments.
Under The Plain Dealer's buyout offer, employees are eligible for six to 18 months of salary and health care coverage, depending upon length of service with the company.
"We really don't have a target number," Egger said. "We very much respect each individual's decision about whether it works best for them at this point." They have until Oct. 2 to decide.
The Plain Dealer offered a buyout to all employees in 2006, and 64 newsroom employees left with severance packages. The Beacon Journal laid off 40 newsroom employees — 25 percent of the staff — in 2006.
The Plain Dealer is owned by Advance Publications Inc. and has a daily circulation of about 345,000. The Beacon Journal, which has an average weekday circulation of about 134,000 and 173,000 on Sunday, is owned by Sound Publishing Holdings Inc., a subsidiary of Canada's Black Press Ltd.
Read the Associated Press story in Editor & Publisher
Read the PD website story by Frank Bentayou and John Funk on Cleveland.com
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3 comments:
If readers and advertisers supposedly are flocking to the Internet, why aren’t newspapers following suit and reallocating their news staffs and ad sales people to this online medium, rather than laying them all off in a desperate attempt to eke out a profit?
Don’t publishers realize that cutting newspaper staffs to the bone dilutes the product to the point where it will be completely devalued?
If the business model of the printed newspaper no longer is feasible, then so be it. Pull the plug. But we cannot let the profession of journalism be bled to a slow death like it is now.
The essence of journalism, news gathering, reporting and analysis must be preserved in the new online medium. In fact, it should flourish like never before.
With no printing, production and physical distribution expenses, news “papers” can be produced extremely more cost-effectively online.
This would free up money for even MORE reporters, editors, graphic designers and video producers to produce quality journalism, freed from the constraints of a finite news hole.
Instead, we are kicking journalists to the curb like yesterday's garbage.
The essence of journalism is the most precious commodity we should be clinging to, not the ink and paper medium.
This is what we must preserve. Before it’s too late.
Well said, Ken. I also think it is time for the "Newspapers", as we knew them, to go the way of most things that outlive their usefulness. I must say, "I will miss them".
Don Roese
Ken - Your comment is one of the wiser ones I have read about this decline of print media. It is a transition, or, at least should be. Well said. Bill O'Connor.
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