Newspaper conglomerate has master plan
The Lexington Herald Leader is the latest McClatchy newspaper to get swept up in economic turbulence. The Kentucky newspaper on Monday laid off 49 full time employees and 4 part-time workers.
The layoffs are part of McClatchy’s overall effort to eliminate about 15 percent of its total workforce, which is about 1,600 jobs.
Salary cuts for remaining employees
The job cuts at the Lexington Herald Leader amount to about 15 percent of the staff. Remaining employees with salaries higher than $25,000 per year will get 5 percent pay cuts.
Executives at the newspaper will get 10 percent pay cuts. Bonuses will not be given out at the Lexington Herald Leader in 2009. Vacant positions will stay vacant, and some full-time positions will be reduced to part-time positions.
More possible changes
Some employees might need payday loans if the newspaper follows through with a plan to require unpaid vacation. The newsroom worker’s union agreed to the furloughs, but it’s unknown whether they will become mandatory.
Editor heads for the door
Two days after the newspaper announced the layoffs and salary cuts, the editor announced she is leaving the paper. Editor Linda Austin will be joining the ranks of higher education.
Austin is taking a job as executive director of Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University.
Big picture
McClatchy is making cuts in the face of declining ad revenue. It also is struggling with $4 billion in debt, a result of McClatchy purchasing competing newspaper conglomerate Knight Ridder. About $2 billion of that was debt Knight Ridder already had.
McClatchy fallout
Another McClatchy-owned newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News, made cuts last week, also eliminating about 15 percent of the newspaper’s staff. It is pretty safe to expect that all McClatchy-owned newspapers will be required to cut 15 percent of their staffs within the next few months.
Paper trail
Also this week, two of the largest newspapers in the U.S. announced cuts. Privately owned Atlanta Journal-Constitution is cutting about 30 percent of its staff. Hearst Corp.’s Houston Chronicle is eliminating about 12 percent of its staff.
Wow. Newspapers seem to be the hardest hit of any industry during this recession, although the online journal boom over the last ten years probably has a hand in it. McClatchy is the second largest newspaper conglomerate in the U.S., so this is likely to affect a lot more of them.