Newsday to add 34 editorial jobs

Posted by Clara Martínez Turco on August 12, 2010 at 1:18 PM

Newsday, which is owned by Cablevision Systems Corp, will be hiring 34 journalists for its newsroom and digital team over the next six months, and it will add 2,600 news and opinion pages annually, Crain's New York reported yesterday.

"I'm very excited to announce that we are making this significant investment in people and pages to provide more and stronger coverage for Long Islanders," editor-in-chief Debby Krenek said in a memo sent to the newspaper staff, while explaining that the move is aimed at "boosting our local coverage," Poynter Online quoted.

Photo Source: Getty Images via The New York Observer

The announcement comes a few weeks after the company negotiated with workers to reduce pay by 5 and 10 percent. According to the New York Post, in the second quarter of this year, Newsday's revenue fall 9.7 percent to $80.1 million and its operating loss declined to $1.3 million from 2009's $2.8 million.

The paper's expansion will also touch the business section, which will now covered more local businesses, while the Sunday edition will have more local news.

Newsday put its website behind a paywall last year, and in January, three months after the paywall was raised, just 35 people had signed up for an online subscription. The reason was likely because print subscribers get free access to the site, as does anyone who has Optimum Cable television, which is owned by Newsday's owner, the Dolan family and Cablevision. As of January, about 75 percent of Long Island's residents had either Optimum Cable or a subscription.

The website still has a paywall, which prompts users to sign in or sign up for a subscription when they click on articles.