Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Blog - Employment

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.

Oldest U.S. gay weekly, felled by finances, to be revived by staff

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:26:19 -0600

The Washington (D.C.) Blade closed its doors by noon yesterday, another casualty of the insolvency of its Atlanta-based parent publisher Windows Media, The Washington Times reported today. The weekly tabloid was reputedly the longest-running gay newspaper in the United States.

Undaunted by the abrupt closure, though, staffers intend to carry on with a public social event scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday in the District of Columbia's Hard Rock Cafe restaurant, The Washington Examiner reported yesterday. The publication confirmed the event yesterday via Twitter.

Colorado newspaper lays off 11 more, bringing staff under 300

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:07:21 -0600

The (Colorado Springs, United States) Gazette shed 11 more workers Friday, the Denver Post reported today. This round of layoffs, which hit the newsroom hardest with seven from editorial positions, brings the total staff of the Colorado daily under 300.

The Gazette is owned by Freedom Communications Inc., based in Irvine, Calif., according to 5280 Magazine. Freedom filed for bankruptcy protection from its creditors in September, as 5280 then reported.

Despite layoffs, Adobe expands newspaper support team

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:02:14 -0600

Adobe, maker of pdf software, has announced plans to create a new division within the company devoted to products focused on newspapers, among other things, Read Write Web today reported. The initiative comes even as Adobe has had to lay off 10 percent of its workforce in other departments due to the economic climate of the past year.

Though Adobe's announcement did not specify which newspaper products were in development, The Boston Globe newspaper may give a hint. The Globe today launched GlobeReader, a digital newspaper that replaces print but does not require live Internet access the entire time it is being viewed. The GlobeReader relies on Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR, both components of the Flash Platform, as announced in today's press release.

NYT to cut 25 more editorial jobs

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:52:54 -0600

The New York Times News Service, which, like The Associated Press, repackages its articles for redistribution to news wires around the world, will trim 25 of 28 jobs and relocate this arm of its operations to Florida, paidContent reported yesterday.

The new round of cuts comes on the heels of 100 layoffs recently announced in the print newsroom, Reuters today reported. Starting sometime in 2010, the news service will be housed at The Gainesville Sun, a non-unionised New York Times Co. newspaper, according to The New York Times.