In the current market can newsroom cuts ever be described as 'Incredible'?

Last Friday I posted on an article out of LA was headlined Incredibly, deep new cutbacks at L.A. Times

I wrote at the time:

Markets in free fall Monday and Tuesday and on Monday this story breaks out of LA. It's written as if it's some kind of big shocking surprise!! No! Why don't journalists get it? They report a global recession but don't seem to think it will impact their own operating newsroom budgets.What the in the name of whatever expletive or deity your wish to insert is so fucking incredible about this?

I forwarded my post to the journalist in L.A responsible, and this was his response (if he had taken two seconds to check out the blog he would have worked out that the person who had forwarded him this post was indeed the blogger himself - me; so I'll go ahead and post his reply by email verbatim).

Thanks for the forward. If the blogger had been following the LAT he'd know the context that makes the new round of cuts arguably incredible -- that the LAT already did several rounds of cuts this year -- more than any other big US paper -- and the last round had barely ended when the new cuts were announced. In good companies, things don't change enough in three weeks to force widespread new layoffs. The publisher had said no new cuts were in sight, so these are even more surprising and seem like panic, not smart strategy. The Times has been run in panic mode for years, thus has lost more readers than any US paper. It arguably needs to improve not worsen its quality to stem the outflow of readers. And the LAT still makes tons of money. The cuts that one could argue should be done to respond to a plunging economy had *already been made.* These are on top of those, and probably driven by the owner being over-leveraged, and may have nothing real to do with the economic crisis.
Other than that, he nailed it.

I'll leave you to judge the merits of his response.

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"Incredibly, deep new cutbacks at L.A. Times" (LAObserved)

I had two conversations this week with two senior newspaper editors, both extremely secure in their jobs and positions, or so they told me. All this while all hell is breaking loose and they are writing daily stories about layoffs, Wall Street to Main Street, the 1930s and I don't know what.

It's as if they think they live in a bubble where a complete massacre of the 2009 Advertising Budget as a result of already bad predictions, exacerbated by the end of Act I of the Financial Meltdown, is not going to impact their jobs, their newsroom, their sacred ground.


Wrong.


Markets in free fall Monday and Tuesday and on Monday this story breaks out of LA.

Incredibly, deep new cutbacks at L.A. Times (see below for full text)

It's written as if it's some kind of big shocking surprise!!

No! Why don't journalists get it? They report a global recession but don't seem to think it will impact their own operating newsroom budgets.

What the in the name of whatever expletive or deity your wish to insert is so fucking incredible about this?





Incredibly, deep new cutbacks at L.A. Times

This is a breaking situation this afternoon. Editors met over the weekend to get the word and to refine their lists. Newsroom staffers are being told today individually and in department meetings that as many as 75 editorial positions are being cut through voluntary departures and layoffs. Some staffers were approached last week about volunteering, "enticed" with the threat that this will be the absolute final time that editorial employees will receive two weeks severance pay for each year of service when they leave. When new publisher Eddy Hartenstein took over in August, right after the last round of deep cuts, he was asked repeatedly about the prospect of new layoffs, and according to a first-hand report I passed along then:


The question of more layoffs was posed in half a dozen different ways and he said he hadn't been given a target number for the staff, that Sam Zell told him to run the place, etc., etc. He did say (as did Mark Willes and Sam Zell) that we can't cut our way to prosperity.


I've emailed Hartenstein and Times spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan some questions about what has changed since August and the extent of this round of cutbacks. My sources say the newsroom staffing level is headed to about 650, but I don't know if that includes the decimation of the Washington bureau expected by many there after the November election. Associate Editor for features Leo Wolinsky is holding a meeting with his staff shortly amid strong rumors that he is leaving. Stay tuned.
* Update: Wolinsky confirmed to his people that he's out, citing staff reorganization. Editor Russ Stanton has announced a 5 pm staff meeting. Wolinsky, you'll remember, moved over into the features job during the March buyout wave after years as the page one editor under a few different titles.
2:53 PM Monday, October 6 2008
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2008/10/incredibly_deep_new_cutba.php



Kevin Roderick, who wrote this piece, and perhaps the headline, needs to re-define his sense of the incredible.

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