McClatchy plans to eliminate 1,600 jobs

[Bozita]

Source: Detroit News

Monday, March 9, 2009
McClatchy plans to eliminate 1,600 jobs


SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. said Monday that it plans to eliminate 1,600 jobs, or 15 percent of its work force, as it contends with declining revenue and a deepening recession.

The company, which owns The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee and other properties, had said that it planned deep cost cuts this year, hoping to save between $100 million to $110 million, and slashed its dividend 90 percent.

But Chairman and Chief Executive Gary Pruitt said in a statement Monday that "given the worsening economy, we must do more."

The cost-control efforts come as McClatchy is faced with plunging ad revenues plaguing the entire publishing sector, as well as trying to recover $5.3 million owed by newspapers it had sold to companies that have recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Read more: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090309/BIZ/903090395/1361

[NV Whino]

1. Sad news

We need McClatchy papers.

[Alcibiades]

2. I used to live near Sacto

And read the Bee regularly, but now I live in Durham, and read the News and Observer.

Not a big fan of their reporting, especially their Washington bureau, which seemed to print unedited Bush administration press releases regularly. Just plan lazy. And they run the same right-wing editorial page nutjobs that all the other papers run. I don't give a shit what George Will has to say: I know what he's going to write before he writes it. They are also quick to cave to charges of "liberal bias," though I don't think it's ever existed there.

Plus, acquiring Knight-Ridder was a horrible business decision. Instead of improving its own core business, they chose to spend $6.5 billion on an unprofitable newspaper chain, in 2006, a singularly bad year to buy large, unprofitable newspaper chains.

Still, a better paper than the Durham Herald Sun. It will be sad to see them go, which they will, eventually, after the last employee is downsized and the company still is not profitable.

[olddad56]

3. The Sacramento Bee is a shell of it's former self.

The quality of the actual paper and print has gone downhill. The paper is much thinner and less newsworthy.Because of craigslist, the classified are a couple of pages. Overall, the newspaper isn't very good any longer. I don't think they will survive.

[Alcibiades]

4. A shame

I wasn't there to see the decline of the Bee. The N&O is much as you describe the Bee today--nonetheless, it is still better than our other local paper.

[roseBudd]

6. Yes and to think we may lose the fourth estate because of Craigslist...

It's true, classifieds were the biggest part of the revenue pie by the column inch, not the full page retail ads.

[olddad56]

7. the full page reatil adds are declining also.

[roseBudd]

8. Yes they are, automotive and real estate have been especially bad for obvious reasons

[roseBudd]

5. We need all the newspapers even the ones we hate for endorsing republicans,

no one else is going to sift through the minutiae of local government