According to an ongoing count at
www.iwantmedia.com, more than 72,000 media professionals have lost their jobs since 2000. As a result, news outlets across the country are struggling to deliver the same level of coverage to the public.
Here is a sampling of what’s been taking place at newspapers across the country and the impact it’s had on service to readers:
At the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press: According to the Minnesota Newspaper Guild (
www.shoptalknet.org), 29 full-time and 37 part-time Guild members took buyouts or were laid off in November and December of 2006 in the latest round of cuts under MediaNews, which purchased the paper earlier this year.
At the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News: Although it originally planned to trim nearly 70 employees from its workforce, new owners MediaNews agreed in December 2006 to limit the number of job cuts to 35.
At the Philadelphia Daily News and The Inquirer: Six months after a group of local investors purchased the papers, the new owners are starting to target workers’ pensions and job security. The Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia (http://local-10.com) outlines recent changes proposed by the new owners, Philadelphia Media Holdings, in this excerpt from a November 2006 Guild statement:
As should be obvious to the new owners, we are totally dedicated to keeping our region one of the leading newspaper and online journalism markets in America. This is why we quickly welcomed the new owners who professed a love for the highest standards of local, independent, hard-hitting journalism, and vowed to be a responsible employer-of-choice. In stirring speeches on the newsroom floor and interviews with out-of-town media, they said they were different from other owners: they would never put profits before people; they would work hard to sustain profitability through new means of revenue generation and clever reader incentives like front-page, peel-off coupons.
Sounded good, maybe too good to be true.
In just a few short months, we now see spin trumping substance, efforts to demonize the workers as the turnaround master plan turns increasingly ugly, apparently aimed at gutting the Guild.
“While we hope it’s all a well-orchestrated bargaining ploy, consider these recent developments:
Despite on-the-record comments to the contrary, the new owners now say they need to stop contributing to Guild member pensions. Freezing retirement contributions would be tantamount to slashing paychecks for all the workers.
Despite proclaiming respect for organized labor - and including the area’s largest trade union as part of the ownership group - the new owners now say they want to eliminate seniority as the basis for determining staff reductions. This would allow management to fire anyone at will regardless of performance or value.
Suggesting a miscalculation in new revenue generation, the new owners now say as many as 40 percent (150) of the Inquirer’s already depleted editorial staff could be axed. This flies in the face of claims to preserve and protect the value of the newspaper.
The Daily News is a shadow of its former self and the new owners sound less and less committed to its continued publication.”
At Newsday in New York: Newspaper staff recently sounded off in a letter to current and potential future owners, posted at www.savejournalism.org. Some excerpts:
“In the newsrooms and bureaus of Newsday, we watch with growing dismay the Tribune Company's stewardship of our newspaper. In its six years of ownership, Tribune has damaged Newsday as an instrument of public information and accountability and, for that matter, as a business. …”
“Newsday's staff is still utterly dedicated to doing the best reporting and writing anywhere. When permitted, we do just that, reporting from Bosnia, Afghanistan, Cuba and Iraq, while simultaneously uncovering the waste of public funds in Long Island fire houses and schools. But it is becoming more and more difficult to cover the region and the world under a corporate owner that looks to cut rather than build. Tribune's attempts to increase its profits are dulling Newsday's brand and giving readers and advertisers less incentive to turn to the paper. …”
“Tribune has cut Newsday's news staff by about a third, curtailing our ability to cover even Long Island. It has ordered our foreign bureaus to close and slashed our staffs covering Washington, D.C., New York City, business, and health and science. Our staff is spread too thin; we're missing stories we should have gotten. Too often, when we hear of stories that are important to our readers, there is no space for them. The company has forced us to replace much of our unique journalism with wire stories that can be found on the Internet.”