Virginian-Pilot kills Link tab, lays off 15 from newsroom
After a year full of buyouts and losing positions through attrition, the Virginian-Pilot is finally being struck by layoffs.
The Pilot building on Norfolk’s Brambleton Avenue.
The newsroom is on the second floor; Landmark
corporate HQ is on the third.
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Editor Denis Finley announced Thursday that the Pilot would eliminate 125 jobs in total, 15 of them in the already-depleted newsroom. Getting the axe will be Link — the Pilot’s two-year-old free weekday tab aimed at younger readers.
Pilot business reporter Phil Walzer reports in Saturday’s edition:
The Pilot newsroom will lose 15 employees, with a combined 297 years of service, editor Denis Finley said. Some, he said, wanted to leave the newspaper. In addition, two open positions will be dropped. That will put the newsroom staff at 193 - 22 percent smaller than its size of 248 in January 2007.
Most of the 15 are editors and managers, Finley said. “One of the goals,” he said, “was to keep as many reporters on the street as possible.”
With the layoffs come a whole bunch of changes. The paper will cut back the number of pages it prints every week by 40 pages — or 8 percent. Stock listings will finally be eliminated. Daily business stories will be folded into the A and B sections and a “market page”– perhaps they mean the AP’s Money and Markets feature — will run in the A section.
All these things occur in January, the Pilot reports. That’s also when the AP will begin offering Money and Markets to its members for free.
The Pilot is also closing down military base newspapers it owns in Georgia, Alabama and Texas and is considering axing Port Folio Weekly — an alternative weekly that’s been around forever — and Mix, a monthly that focuses on multi-cultural issues and lifestyles.
The cover for Friday’s Link.
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By far the biggest change, however, will be the elimination of Link. Walzer writes:
The Pilot will close Link at the end of the year “much to my sadness,” but might maintain its Web site, [said Virginian-Pilot publisher Maurice Jones].
The publication, begun in October 2006, had received positive reviews and met financial projections, which predicted it would turn profitable by 2010, he said. But “we, as a company, cannot afford to withstand those losses in the next couple of years in this climate.”
This is sad news. Link was wonderfully written and designed, brilliantly edited by former Pilot designer and assistant features edtior Brianne Warner and, by all accounts, well-accepted by readers and advertisers. We were just writing about them the other day.
Finally, you’ll recall The Virginian-Pilot is still up for sale. Walzer reports:
The newspaper’s owner, Landmark Media Enterprises LLC, continues to negotiate a sale of the newspaper. A buyer is trying to get financing, Jones said. The potential sale, he said, did not influence the cost-saving measures.
Probably unnecessary to mention, but for the benefit of any new blog readers, I’ll provide this full-disclosure notice: I spent most of the past five years as graphics editor of the Pilot. My own position was eliminated last winter. I remained as a senior graphic artist until I left for another job in late summer — and then that job disappeared, too.
I still reside in Virginia Beach. And I still read the Pilot every day.
Read our previous coverage about the sale of the Pilot:
Jan. 2: The breakup of Landmark and sale of its assets is first announced.
Jan. 4: The Pilot’s owner confirms his intent to sell.
Jan. 11: Pat Robertson announces he wants to buy the Pilot.
Jan. 14: Tight-lipped Landmark execs cause Pilot staffers to get their own news from the wires. But the Pilot uses strong language in its news stories.
March 11: The request for bids goes out.
May 19: Arkansas-based chain said to be interested in buying The Virginian-Pilot.
May 31: Bids are reportedly in for the Weather Channel.
June 14: Weather Channel bids still up in the air.
July 6: Landmark sells Weather Channel for $3.5 billion
Oct. 30: Sale of the Pilot reportedly held up by credit meltdown.
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
In a year full of discouraging news, the closing of Link is maybe the most discouraging to me. I thought it was such a great product. Smartly edited and designed. While I didn’t have the opportunity to see it on a daily basis, the copies I got my hands on grabbed me and made me want to read — something I really can’t say about most general interest dailies anymore. I kind of thought of Link, along with Red Eye, as a newspaper model that might work for younger readers and the future. It’s a shame that Landmark couldn’t find a way to take the long term view here. But I guess if Landmark is selling, they’re not worried about long term. Call me skeptical, but I have a REAL hard time believing the sell didn’t influence that decision.
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:37 pm
The layoffs probably are a condition of the sale. Better for the current owner to wield the ax than for a new owner to come in and start swinging it. That keeps the new owner from immediately being painted as the bad guy.
The worst part about the closing of Link is losing someone as talented as Brianne. I hope the high sheriffs at least found a job for her on the main sheet. She’s much too talented to let go.
Link was a good idea but not really suited for Hampton Roads. If Norfolk and environs had a heavily used mass transit system, Link really would have thrived. That’s why RedEye was so successful in Chicago — it’s easily available at most el stations. And who doesn’t want something to read on the train?
November 23rd, 2008 at 7:14 pm
It’s been a miserable few weeks waiting for the final word on Link. Even after the ax has fallen, I still find it hard to believe that something that me and the rest of the Link staff sweated so much blood over for so long is really going away.
I always thought that Link was going to be the thing that I did that would still be around 20 years from now. By the end of the month it’ll be nothing but a couple of boxes of mementos in my office.
There’s many aspects of this whole thing that strike me as really unfair, mainly because all my friends are losing their jobs. I would like to disabuse the notion that Link somehow “failed.” As Charles noted in his story, Link was. by any yardstick you can think of, a rip-roaring success. It was meeting its financial targets, was on track to profitability, it had a fervent readership and it was attracting many advertisers who were new to the company. Hell, we made it into the final round of judging for World’s Best Designed after only being around for three months — a testament to a great staff.
As has been reported, The Pilot is still for sale — alas — and buyers are trying to get financing. I suspect that Link got the ax in order to clean up its books of any liabilities in order for a lender to underwrite financing. Ironically, Link is one of the things that makes The Pilot worth owning.
When I was working on the prototypes, I was so sure that Link would succeed that I said on many an occasion that if something like Link couldn’t make it, then there was no hope for the newspaper industry. I fear now that if a company can’t stand by something that was such a hit as Link was, then there really is no hope. Maybe its a sign that there shouldn’t be.
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Bryan: I’d argue the entire newsroom is full of people too talented to let go. But maybe I’m biased because I work there.
And, like David said, it was a rip-roaring success. I’ve heard some very sad people in disbelief that they’re closing it over the last two days. And those people? Readers, many of them under the age of 30.
Link isn’t folding because it failed. It’s folding because the rest of the company’s struggling and it just happened to be unprofitable at a pretty rough time for a company that’s for sale. We’re victims of a climate, not a failed business model.
And one other thing: Hampton Roads is getting a light rail system that’s supposed to be up by 2010. Not that it mattered: People would go out of their way to stop their cars just to pick up a copy from a box (a sight I’ve seen a couple dozen times over the last two years). I would argue that Link, in fact, was proof that a free paper could thrive in a model without mass transit.
I’ve had a lot of opportunities to do awesome stuff in my still-young career. And Link is by far my favorite thing I’ve ever been involved in. Hampton Roads is losing something really great in a few weeks.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:15 pm
You can’t wait four years for a paper to be profitable.
November 24th, 2008 at 1:47 am
No. Way.
Tragic news guys. A solid product that I’m sure that community will miss. Keep your chin up folks. This will all shake itself out.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Wow, I can’t believe this. After working at The Virginian-Pilot for over two years, I thought I left (in December 2006) when things were looking bad. But I stand corrected. They are *really* looking bad now. I just heard from a friend that still works there that many folks I know are losing their jobs.
More shocking to me, though … Is the Weather Channel REALLY worth $3.5 billion? I love knowing today’s predicted highs/lows as much as the other guy, but wow. I’m speechless.
And I’m in the wrong business.
November 24th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
This is not the fault of the reporters and journalists at Link. This is what happens when managers give up hope.
Either you believe journalism is important, or you don’t. Either you believe that what we do is worth a damn, or you don’t. Either you believe journalism is going to be around, or you don’t.
If you do, you invest now for the future. If you do, you diversify your streams of income. If you do, you don’t give up.
The managers have spoken.
There are thousands of bloggers without business or journalism backgrounds making a decent living in journalism and there are managers with business and journalism backgrounds who believe it’s impossible — we’re old and dying and things that are new and young and innovative just aren’t worth the effort.
To quote Sports Night, “The show is good. If someone can’t make money of this show, they should get out of the money making business.”
November 24th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
By managers, do you mean owners? I doubt that any managers in Norfolk wanted to close Link or had any choice about it. None of us know, we’re not on the inside. But my guess is that Landmark simply doesn’t want to spend money on something they’ll never reap profits from and they can improve their financial standing in the short term by killing it. Easy to speculate from the outside though. I mainly just feel bad for the people losing their jobs and for seeing a project that was working come to an end.
November 24th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
By managers, I mean whoever made the decision.
Financial decisions based on short-term standings aren’t good for employees. They aren’t good for investors and they aren’t good for the company. Investors don’t invest for today. The very word for investment is counter-intuitive to the approach. Investors invest for the future. Either a company’s owners make the investment for the future, or they don’t. If they think about the short-term then it isn’t an investment. It’s a lack of investment.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
WTF.
This proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we have a Phoenix to build.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:31 am
As a student journalist that will soon be entering the workforce it breaks my heart to see “Link” go. For God’s sake, if they don’t see the value in keeping something so innovative alive it only continues to scare me for the future of newspapers.
November 25th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Putney,
I know that overcoming the perception that Link “failed” is difficult. We had to close up our Buzz, our free commuter daily, a couple of months ago, and had to see some good journalists go with it. Aside from wishing farewell to those let go, the hardest part can be overcoming the sense that the product didn’t work. In the case of Buzz, it outperformed every readership metric we imposed on it.
Hang in there, and send our best to folks at the Pilot — both those departing and still there.
November 25th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
When we started what became Trib PM in Pittsburgh, I remember thinking about whether that afternoon tab would cannibalize readers of our morning paper (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review). I don’t think it has, but there has been some idea transfer back and forth, and some freedom in the tab that the broadsheet didn’t then have.
If nothing else, these commuter tabs should help sharpen the broadsheets that sponsor(ed) them. Here’s hoping that happens at the Pilot and in Salt Lake City.