McClatchy cuts another 1,150 jobs to save $100 million
By Erina Lin, Wednesday 17 September 2008 at 18:28 :: Labor & Employment :: #2301 :: rss
McClatchy announced it will cut another 1,150 jobs, or about 10 percent of its workforce, its second big job elimination of the year, paidContent reported.
Excluding $20 million in severance costs, this move is aimed to save $100 million for the company over the next year, which represents about 6 percent of trailing 12 month expenses for the company. About half of the cuts will come from “voluntary programmes and managed attrition.”
In June, McClatchy announced 1,400 position cuts, or 10 percent of its workforce at the time. The company said last month that further layoffs might be avoided following a wage freeze, paidContent reported.
McClatchy shares have dropped from around $21 to about $3 in the last year.
Although the announcement did not offer a breakdown between editorial and non-editorial eliminations, CEO Gary Pruitt mentioned efforts to “sustain editorial quality and meet its public service journalism obligations despite some staff reductions,” according to the company, paidContent reported.
McClatchy’s August results were predictably weak. Revenue fell 15.7 percent on a 17.8 percent decline in advertising revenue. Online revenue rose 7.4 percent, relatively impressive compared to the slow-to-no online growth among many other publishers this summer.
Last week it was announced that CEO Gary Pruitt had removed himself as trustee of the McClatchy family trust, which aroused some speculation that the company could go private later, according to paidContent.
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