Charles Apple

John McManus of Grade the News reported Thursday even more bad news for our friends in San Jose:

Sixty more newsroom positions – almost one in four — are to be eliminated at the San Jose Mercury News this summer after a layoff moratorium negotiated with the local Newspaper Guild expires, Grade the News has learned.

Jeez. Haven’t those guys suffered enough?

Read it here:
http://gradethenews.org/2007/Merccuts.htm

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UPDATE

A Merc employee tells me there is at least one big factual error in the report linked to, above.

Meanwhile, Merc executive editor Carole Leigh Hutton announced to her staff Thursday:

I’m seeing and hearing a lot of rumors about plans for cuts and consolidations here. There’s no denying that this has been a tough year financially and we’re in the midst of a difficult budget season for the fiscal year that begins in July. We’re discussing a number of cost-cutting measures. As soon as I can give you some definitive plans, I will. Meanwhile, I hope we can focus some of that energy on doing the journalism we do so well.

Check out Romenesko for more:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45

Hang in there, guys…

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UPDATE II

Also updated this weekend at Romenesko:

News of multiple buyouts at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
http://www.minnesotamonitor.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=199672A14FBFEFD725EDDD3E39D7F589?diaryId=1871

And at The Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-buyout2jun02,0,6407731,full.story?coll=la-home-business

Not updated this weekend, but I’ll include it because a) I don’t want anyone to think we’re picking on them, and b) I’ve not yet seen it reported elsewhere…

Yes, The Virginian-Pilot is offering buyouts as well. The deadline to sign up was May 31. No word yet on how many did. Read our April story here:
http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=122981&ran=222996

That LA Times story is epecially notable. The Times hasn’t been afraid to show its warts in its own pages. The last few graphs of the story, written by James Rainey:

As the accumulation of farewells verged on the mawkish, reporter Rone Tempest, who has written about wars in the Middle East and the transformation of China, offered relief in the form of his own e-mailed sign-off Friday.

“4 Career Life Lessons from a Retiring Hack,” it read.

“1) Never write a company-wide memo

“2) In any foreign language the most important phrase is ‘My friend will pay’ as in French ‘mon ami va payer’ or Chinese ‘Wo de pengyou yao mai le’

“3) Given a choice, Bordeaux red

“4) Never get killed for an inside story.”

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 8:51 am and is filed under Industry woes, Newspapers, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.