Gary Pruitt still draws down $935,000 to run McClatchy – a 15% reduction which he recently voluntarily imposed but it’s still too much. Salaries at around $1 million in a business that is fighting for every penny to pay back debt are really not on. Craig Dubow, Gannett CEO, voluntarily took a $200,000 salary cut last November, lasting through this year but he still pulls in $1 million, and that’s too high when Gannett newspapers are being closed (Tucson end of this week) and employees around the country placed on unpaid furloughs.
Sulzberger gets $1 million, so does Times Company CEO Janet Robinson, and yet the company had to do a lease-back of its building and take a 14% loan from Carlos Slim to ensure debt payments are met this year.
Objecting to those numbers is not being mean-minded. A few hundred thousand from this executive and a couple of hundred thousand from this executive – those amounts add up quickly and can all go towards helping with the debt payments.
Salaries of chief financial officers, chief operating officers, and chief whatever they call themselves these days, are all based on the good old days when newspapers were pulling in huge profits after debt. Now profits are down; so keeping salaries as they were in the good old days without increase, or giving up a couple of hundred thousand or so is not enough given what is happening to the business.
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