In the wake of a recent Audit Bureau of Circulations report showing accelerating declines in newspaper circulation, outlets across the country are again trimming operations and personnel to offset the downturn.
Earlier this week, The Los Angeles Times — like The Baltimore Sun, a Tribune Co. property and often a bellwether of developments at sister papers — announced the cut of 75 more positions from a payroll already decimated to the point that a series of editors and publishers have left or been replaced.
The debt-heavy conglomerate, whose flagship Chicago Tribune, according to ABC, suffered a 5.8 percent Sunday and a 7.8 percent weekday circulation decline year over year for the last six months, reportedly also plans to merge its Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times news bureaus in Washington, D.C., cutting personnel and opening it to all the company’s newspapers.
“The buyouts here haven’t helped,” Brent Jones, Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild unit vice chairman at The Sun, said of the paper’s 6 percent daily and 3.8 percent Sunday circulation drop in the period. “Now there’s less people to do in-depth stories. … I don’t know if that’s the top factor, but that doesn’t help.
Jones confirmed the possibility of another reduction in force — this time exempting the newsroom — at the downsized newspaper. He also acknowledged that the union would attempt to organize the paper’s off-site, online personnel, which are moving from rented Cross Keys offices to The Sun’s Calvert Street headquarters.
“With the way the retail numbers are looking, it wouldn’t surprise me. But we’re not hearing anything yet,” Angie Kuhl, the union’s unit chairwoman at The Sun, added about impending cutbacks.
Sun Senior Vice President for Operations and Technology Stephen Seidl did not return calls for comment.
In other developments, Gannett newspapers announced Tuesday that it will cut 3,000 jobs — almost 10 percent of its work force of 32,000 — in a move that follows an August round of layoff and buyouts that eliminated 1,000.
Time magazine announced it will cut staff by 10 percent, and the Atlanta Constitution, where circulation has declined 13.6 percent in the period — the most among the nation’s top 25 newspapers — will reduce its footprint distribution by 33 percent.
“The decline is worse than it has been in the past for several reasons,” said newspaper industry analyst John Morton. “On top of the long-term decline … and all this economic uncertainly, we now have newspapers cutting back on distance circulation.”
