Times Union employees reject outsourcing

According to the Albany Newspaper Guild blog, Time Union employees voted down a contract offer that would have allowed the company to outsource any job and layoff employees regardless of their time and seniority at the newspaper by a vote of 125 to 35.
View the blog release here.

What do you think of the employees' vote? How do you feel about outsourcing in the newsroom? Comment and tell us.

Pinching Forbes

The New York Times reported today that even Forbes is feeling the squeeze of the economy.
While Forbes magazine has 920,000 subscribers, its average issue price has steadily decreased and its ad pages are down 15 percent in the first quarter compared to last year.
The article reports Forbes has stopped matching contributions to its 401k program, laid off roughly 100 of its 1,000 employees since November and started five-day unpaid furloughs for its staff.
In the story, Mark M. Edmiston of AdMedia Partners asserts Forbes isn't worth half the $75 million its worth has been estimated in the past.
Yet the Times reports that Forbes' misery isn't without company, with the Publishers Information Bureau listing revenue of over $338 million for Forbes, $276 million for Fortune and $236 million for BusinessWeek.
The story shows the recession is impacting both people's demand for Forbes' economic content and its employees' desire to cover it. From the story:

“Everyone here likes the magazine, the people who run it, and most of us believe in the mission,” said one editorial employee who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak with a reporter. “But that sense of mission is sort of hard to sustain when most of the news is bad. Capitalism is a less sexy topic for everyone, including us.”

View the story here.

Is covering capitalism less sexy for you? What do you think about the struggling of Forbes and its competitors? Comment and let use know.

Road to Ruin

MSNBC has created an interactive timeline charting the major business milestones of America's auto industry over since 1978. It also charts the stocks of General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Company and Chrysler as well as gas prices per gallon, new car dealerships, dealership employees and new vehicles sold.
There can never be too much context with complex issues like those plaging the automotive industry right now, and MSNBC helps give a fresh look at the big picture with its interactive media.
View the timeline here.

GM plant closures

The Wall Street Journal has a short, straightforward story on the 17 factories and part centers General Motors Corp. will be closing as part of its Chapter 11. The story lists the plants by their town and state locations. WSJ states that G.M. plans to cut roughly 20,000 factory jobs (more than 1/3 of G.M.'s U.S. workforce).
According to the story, 3 plants may "reopen if market demand rebounds." The story also mentions G.M.'s plans to convert a factory currently unused into a place to construct small cars.
View the story here.

GM overview

Portfolio.com has a great overview of General Motors Corp. including:

• Its chief executive officer and contact information
• Recent news on the company
• The number of employees at G.M. and revenue per employee
• Quarterly and annual financial information
• Stock information

View the overview here.

GM retirees get the shorter end of the stick

A flood of stories on General Motors Corp. washed over the unsuspecting public this morning. As of 10:04 am MST, there were 52,479 stories on Google News about G.M. filing for bankruptcy.
While many stories covered the necessary basics of what happened, some went beyond to look at the more detailed picture of the company's financial collapse. Forbes' story "A Sickening Outcome For GM Retirees" is a good example of highlighting the personal and devastating in what could be the faceless falling of a company.
At a time when people are still waiting to see the full fallout of a company's chapter 11, it's important to remember the people at the heart of the company and the story.
View the story here.

San Diego Union Tribune makes employees sign confidentiality agreement with non-solicitation clause

The San Diego Union Tribune is reportedly making employees sign a confidentiality agreement with a non-solicitation clause.
The agreement inhibits employees from joining rival organizations and from bringing their Tribune colleagues with them (whether currently employed or unemployed at the paper). Part of the agreement states:

"I shall not solicit directly or indirectly, any person who is a SDUT employee or who has been employed by SDUT within the prior six (6) months for employment by, or any business relationship with, a competitor."

This restriction reportedly lasts two years after a staff member's employment is ended.
View the story here.

Dow Jones trims benefits

Though The Wall Street Journal's circulation and site usage has increased, its parent company News Corp. is cutting back benefits in the face of economic woes.
Dow Jones Chief Executive Les Hinton announced the cuts in a memo Tuesday. The cuts will freeze the Money Purchase Plan and reduce health care subsidies for the retired.
Hinton said some of the money saved in the cuts would be put toward new health and wellness benefits.
Hinton said in the memo, "We want to give Dow Jones employees - whose ages, family situations, and career profiles are more varied than ever before - increased choice and enhanced coverage while providing individuals with better ways to manage health care costs."
Read the full story here.

Still hope for newspapers

In a recent Forbes.com article, Lauren Rich Fine, director of research at ContentNext Media, urges newspapers employees to expand their boundaries and challenge current media norms with creative alternatives in order to prolong their longevity.
"The world is changing. Newspapers need to change with it," said Fine who also is a practitioner in residence at Ohio’s Kent State University College of Communication & Information.
Fine suggests media companies re-vamp their community relationships by having reporters interact more with residents. Also, newspapers can add value to their content for the communities they serve by embracing new media options for better engagement.

Tucson Citizen ceases its print publication Saturday

Arizona's oldest paper, the Tucson Citizen, will cease it's print publication after Saturday's edition.
The paper reports that the Citizen's Web site will continue, but will be modified as an opinion site, eliminating news and sports reporting.
Gannett, the company which owns the Citizen, searched for a buyer for the paper and for the last month employees waited for the results of negotiations.
Ultimately, no buyers were found.
Employees will be informed today if they will be laid off, kept on staff for a transitional basis or hired full time.
To read the full story click here.

Trib Co. can pay bonuses, not severance

The Associated Press reports that a federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the Tribune Co. can pay more than $13 million in bonuses to almost 700 employees for their work last year.
But the judge denied allowing the Tribune to pay more than $2 million in severance payments to more than 60 employees laid off shortly before the Chicago-based company filed for bankruptcy protection.
From the story:

"We need to motivate and incentivize the key people who will implement change," Bigelow said. "These are really good people we're talking about. They're the best and the brightest of the company."

Star-Ledger announces cuts

George Arwaday, publisher of The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, sent a memo to employees Thursday detailing new pay and benefits cuts at the paper. The entire memo has been posted to Poynter's Romenesko blog.
From the memo:

The first $40,000 of your new combined annualized income will be cut by 5%. If you make more than $40,000, your next $40,000 in income up to $80,000 will be cut by 10%. Any annualized income over $80,000 will be cut by 15%.

In addition, Arwaday told employees that any bonuses they receive will be rolled into their salary and not delivered all at once at the end of the year.
In addition, all employees will now have to pay for 25 percent of their health care coverage. These moves were put in place to help offset a $20 million year-over-year drop in first quarter ad revenue.
To read the memo, click here.

192 positions eliminated at San Diego Union-Tribune

The new owner of the The San Diego Union-Tribune cut 192 jobs at the paper just three days after the acquisition was completed. A Beverly Hills based private equity firm, Platinum Equity, purchased the paper from Copley Press Inc.

Employees were given termination notices, effective July 6, on Thursday. Cuts were made in several departments, including the newsroom. The company assured employees they will receive "transition assistance and termination benefits."

For more click here.

Globe union and NYT reach deal

Early this morning, a tentative deal was reached between the New York Times Co. and The Boston Globe.
The Globe reports that the agreement includes "substantial pay cuts, unpaid furloughs, and modifications to the lifetime job guarantee provisions that protect almost 200 employees in the Boston Newspaper Guild."
From the story:

The Newspaper Guild was the last major union without a tentative agreement after more than a month of high-stakes bargaining to wring $20 million and major contract concessions.

The two sides began the bargaining session last night so far apart that the company had proposed what it called its "last, best offer," deeply slashing wages of guild members by 23 percent to gain the $10 million in concessions, according to union and management representatives with knowledge of the negotiations.

Local TV stations in Chicago form news service

Four local TV stations in Chicago will begin combining their coverage efforts and sharing content next week in an effort to save money, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Tony Capriolo, a WMAQ sports producer, has been selected as managing editor of the service, which will be based at WBBM's headquarters across from Daley Plaza but separate from Channel 2's news operation. Each participating outlet will provide two news crews and an assignment editor, and they remain on their station's payroll. Capriolo is an employee of the service, paid for by participating stations.

While the service will save its member stations money otherwise spent on covering the same event or story, some worry that it will make it easier for the stations to lay off employees who are no longer needed.
The stations, on the other hand, say that the move will allow them to cover more angles and stories than they could before.
Click here to read more.

Sun cuts include Kohn

The Baltimore Sun layoffs include Bernie Kohn, investigations editor and former president of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.
Kohn was previously the assistant managing editor for business before The Sun shuttered its business section last year.
The cuts equal about a quarter of the paper's editorial staff.
To learn more about who is gone from the paper click here.

Baltimore Sun cuts 61 from newsroom

The Baltimore Sun this week laid off 61 newsroom employees, or nearly a third of the total newsroom, according to an article on the paper's website.

The reductions hit nearly every type of job in the 205-person newsroom, including top editors, news photographers, critics, columnists, sports reporters, copy editors, page designers and graphic artists, according to The Newspaper Guild, which was notified of the union-represented layoffs. One news reporter was laid off as well, after leaving voluntarily. Most employees were notified Wednesday, with others laid off late Tuesday.

According to Poynter's Rick Edmonds, Ted Venetoulis, who has been trying to buy the Sun for years, thought that a deal was close at hand. However:

[...] by ditching so many experienced print editors, Tribune Co. could be signaling that it plans to continue running the operation itself rather than selling it.

A Baltimore Sun Media Group representative said the cuts were part of the paper's transition to a 24-hour multimedia news operation.
Click here for the article on the cuts, and here for the Poynter article.

NY Times union tentatively agrees to pay cuts

The Newspaper Guild, which represents newsroom employees at The New York Times, has agreed in principle to a five percent pay cut on union employees, according to an article on the Times' website.

The company has said that the pay reduction would save $4.5 million and avert the elimination of about 80 jobs, mostly in the newsroom. But the union, in reaching the agreement, did not win assurances from the company that there definitely would not be layoffs through the end of the year. If employees are laid off during the period, however, severance packages would be paid based on employees’ salaries before the reduction.

Union members will vote on the pay cut next week. The move comes as the Times is looking for ways to save money after losing nearly $75 million in the first quarter of the year.
To read more, click here.

Former Star-Ledger employees start news site

Last year, New Jersey's The Star-Ledger bought out nearly half of its 330 newsroom employees in an effort to avoid shutting down or exploring a sale if costs could not be cut.
According to Editor & Publisher, 40 of those former employees have now started up their own news site, NewJerseyNewsroom.com.

The site, which so far has only Google ads but virtually no overhead, claims about 10,000 page views per week. It is mixing original reporting about the Garden State -- ranging form statehouse issues to sports -- along with links to other sites, including the Star-Ledger. An arrangement with Voice of America also allows the site to use that outlet's content.

No one working for the site is being paid yet, since they each have several months worth of salary payments remaining from their buyouts. This helps the new site keep costs low while it tries to attract readers, advertising dollars and funding.
To read more, click here.

Cuts on the Trib biz desk

Michael Miner of the Chicago Reader has a partial list of the staffers that were cut in the latest reductions at the Chicago Tribune.
On the business side he has listed four reporters staffers so far. The total number of employees cut will be about 53, so more names might be added in the following days.
Here's a partial list. For the full list click here.
* Susan Diesenhouse, Real Estate Feature Writer
* Eric Benderoff, Technology Reporter, Financial News
* James P. Miller, Corporate Strategy and Manufacturing Reporter, Financial News
* Joshua Boak, Business Reporter

NYT ad revenue way down

Bloomberg reports that The New York Times Co. listed a 27 percent drop in first-quarter advertising revenue, expanding its net loss to $74.5 million.
From the story:

Times Co. cut jobs, slashed pay, halted its dividend and sold assets to help preserve cash after ad revenue slipped 13 percent last year. It’s seeking to sell its minority stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team and is negotiating additional pay and job cuts with unions. “It’s clear from these results that it’s a very, very bad environment for newspapers,” Edward Atorino, a New York-based analyst at Benchmark Co., said in an interview. “There’s no sign of relief.

Prosper Out of Print

California-based Propser, a monthly magazine for the greater Sacramento market focusing on capturing "the entrepreneurial spirit of the people and organizations who are flourishing," is taking what seems to have become the path of choice in today's startup publishing market. The company is halting its print publication, laying off employees and taking time to ponder...can you guess what? Yes, they are considering online initiatives as a way to continue the Prosper brand.
Get more details on the changes in a video message here.

Murdoch tells Dow Jones employees he will set an even "higher bar"

Rupert Murdoch spoke to Dow Jones employees at their Manhattan headquarters several hours after he bought their company, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal's Sarah Ellison.
Murdoch acknowledge that change creates nervousness and is sometimes difficult, but said Dow Jones must be the essential source of financial information and comment in the world.
Ellison reports says that Murdoch told employees he understood the value of Dow Jones and in particular The Wall Street Journal.
"If anything, you will find us trying to set a higher bar," Murdoch said.
Shareholders approved the more than $5 billion sale of Dow Jones & Co. to Murdoch's News Corp. on Thursday.
To read Ellison's full report click here.

BusinessWeek: layoffs and staff shuffle

As many as a dozen BusinessWeek employees will be laid off as magazine combines it print and digital staff into a one editorial operation, according to a report from Folio.
An internal memo was given to staff on Wednesday by editor Stephen Adler.
Folio points out that the layoffs come as BusinessWeek experiences success. It's readership is up 3 percent and newsstand sales up 25 percent.
To read the full report click here.