Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Blog - Employment

Virginia paper outsources page production to Chicago Tribune

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:41:44 -0600

As a part of the Tribune Co.'s efforts to reduce costs and direct resources to focus on local coverage, the Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia will outsource page design, formatting and editing pages to the company's flagship paper, the Chicago Tribune. This announcement came to the staff at both the newspapers on Monday, the Tribune reported.

The transfer of responsibilities from the Daily Press suggests elimination of copy editors and designers, Hampton Roads reported. The newsroom staff will likely be reduced by 15 percent, Digby Solomon, president and chief executive of the Daily Press, told the Tribune.

Fairfax looks for digital director as part of overhaul

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:48:34 -0600

As Fairfax Media restructures, adding a digital director with wide-ranging media experience is essential for the Australian media group's renewal, board chairman Roger Corbett told The Australian this week.

Corbett said he is talking to potential hires who will help strengthen the digital area. "We have pretty good traditional media experience in, of course, John Fairfax and (managing director) Brian McCarthy, but we certainly want to have a mind that understands media and helps us move into this broad new era and the changes that will happen," he said.

USA Today to enforce leave and extend freeze on pay increase

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:39:16 -0600

Gannett Co.'s USA Today will impose an unpaid leave for about 1,500 employees before July, in order to reduce cost and counter advertising and circulation sales downturn, according to a memo to staff, Bloomberg reported.

According to the publisher, David Hunke, in the memo, a pay halt started in February 2009 will be extended by at least 90 days.

DMGT properties see revenues slide; Metro building online money-makers

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:53:15 -0600

UK national newspaper business Associated Newspapers Ltd. this morning reported a 12 percent fall in overall revenue in the last three months of 2009 to £208 million for the period. Meanwhile, Associated's owner, Daily Mail and General Trust, recorded a year-on-year revenue decline of 15 percent in the last three months of 2009, to £482m for the period, Press Gazette reported.

Meanwhile, the company is looking to build new revenue streams, as evidenced by free daily Metro's plans to launch new revenue streams online, MediaWeek reported. Metro is looking to overhaul the commercial aspect of the site, while also launching new audio and video tools. The reworked site is expected to go live from its test phase next month.

Jobs to go at Swedish daily

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:26:33 -0600

Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter has announced that it will cut between 100 and 120 jobs after sustaining multi-million euro losses, The Local reports. This amounts to almost one sixth of the newspaper's workforce.

The company employs 580 people, with half of these in the newsroom. Most of the cuts are expected to affect editorial staff, with more than a third of these set to go. The newspaper reported losses of 97 million kronor, or around €10 million, last year. Despite this, union official Hans Arbman said that the cuts were unexpected.

For more on this story, visit our sister publication, editorsweblog.org.

Washingon Times cuts staff and sports section

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 09:01:18 -0600

Last Wednesday "financially troubled" daily Washington Times announced it will drop its sports section, Agence France-Presse reported Thursday. The paper recently made public its decision to drop a Sunday edition.

According to the National Post, the Times has laid off more than 40 percent of its staff and is planning to focus coverage more on cultural issues, politics, business and investigative reporting. The Los Angeles Times reported that in addition, the publication plans to concentrate less on local news this year. Nevertheless, some sports features will appear.

Report: U.S. newspaper jobs to drop 25% by 2018

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:09:34 -0600

Nearly 25 percent of the U.S. newspaper industry's jobs will no longer exist in 2018, according to a new report from the federal Bureau of Labor and Statistics, Editor & Publisher reported today. Of the top 10 industries by job loss, newspapers rank seventh.

As of the end of 2008, there were about 326,000 jobs in newspapers, but by 2018, that number will drop to 245,000, according to the Employment Projections Summary.

WaPo newsroom redesign: No room for reporters?

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:57:44 -0600

The famed Washington Post newsroom of Woodward and Bernstein is no more, and in its place is a redesigned one. However, if the famed Watergate reporters found themselves trying to type up a story there today, they may have to borrow an editor's desk to do so.

After months of renovation in the Washington Post's newsroom, reporters are returning to find that two-thirds of the floor space is devoted to editors, while reporters' desks are barely large enough to hold a "notebook, phone and a few files," The Washingtonian's Harry Jaffe reported yesterday.

The gutted newsroom, before the redesign. Photo: Ian Shapira

'Journicide': Will the industry's financial woes turn off students?

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:16:44 -0600

A recent post on Alan Mutter's Reflections of a Newsosaur blog has rasied concerns over the potentially devasting impact the current financial crisis in the newspaper industry could have on the willingness of students to choose journalism as a profession.

Mutter argues that in a time where employment opportunities are shrinking and those who do manage to secure jobs are paid a pittance, a 'substantial percentage of the next generation of professional journalists' could be wiped out in a movement he dubs 'journicide.'

"Journicide has been under way since newspapers and other mainstream media began losing their formidable revenue-generating juju in 2006. The elimination of full-time professional journalism jobs since then has been so relentless that it has become remarkably, depressingly commonplace," he writes.

For more on this story, visit our sister site, editorsweblog.org.

NYT Co. pulls Worcester Telegraph from auction block

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:52:50 -0600

The New York Times Co. yesterday announced that it has abandoned plans to sell a Massachusetts newspaper due to a transformation of its "journalistic and business operations," Agence France-Presse reported yesterday.

Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger and chief executive Janet Robinson were quoted by AFP as saying the following in a memo to employees of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette: "We are convinced that in partnership with the Boston Globe you are now prepared to move forward to a brighter future."

Boston union boss out

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:49:58 -0600

The former president of the Boston Newspaper Guild was impeached in absentia for misfeasance when he signed unauthorized checks as well as using a credit card for personal expenses, Editor & Publisher Thursday reported.

Coverage of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in Hyderabad

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 03:09:02 -0600

Over the next few days, the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper blog will be providing extensive coverage of the 62nd World Newspaper Congress and 16th World Editors Forum, working with our sister publications, the Editors Weblog and the dedicated WAN-IFRA multimedia conference blog.

You can follow our coverage on Twitter @NewspaperWorld and @WANindia2009, using the hashtag #WANindia09, or on Facebook at the conference page.

Yearlong pay freeze at Financial Times melts

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:12:13 -0600

The Financial Times will lift a year-long ban on raises and also increase its minimum wage for entry-level journalists in the new year, The Guardian reported yesterday.

FT Managing Editor Dan Bogler was quoted by The Guardian as saying that instituting the modest increase of 2 percent "balances a decent reward for everyone's efforts with a need to be careful about how far we increase our fixed costs."

Taiwan fashion designer turns newspapers into clothing

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:34:14 -0600

Colin Lin, 50, invites fellow couturiers the world over to brainstorm new uses for old newspapers, according to The Associated Press. The Taiwan-based designer has already come up with her own strategy: attach them to strips of cotton and weave them into shoes and bags that are ecofriendly as well as profitable.

"I only contribute very little to recycling all the newspapers dumped everyday around the world," Lin was quoted in today's AP article as saying. "But other footwear and bag manufacturers may want to copy my idea and so contribute their own share to dealing with the problem."

Apparently, some already have. The full wardrobe of a fashion show at Hainan University last October featured nothing but recycled newspaper clothing, as China View then reported.

Photo: AP, via Daily Press

Police raid NY press unions

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:49:19 -0600

An industry already rattled by severe reductions in force was further shaken yesterday as police raided production areas of several New York newspapers, CNN Justice reported yesterday. Prosecutors, who refused to further explain what prompted the investigation, limited public remarks to absolving the newspapers themselves.

New York's Newspaper & Mail Deliverers boasts a 1,600-member non-editorial union, long suspected of ties to organised crime, ChattahBox yesterday reported. A similar racketeering probe in the 1990s led to criminal indictment of the union's then-president, accused and later acquitted of involvement with the Lucchese crime family. The same union has yet to shake the taint of allegations it attempted to extort the New York Post into switching delivery companies.