Cuts coming to McClatchy papers

Also interesting in Boise is another regional paper, the Idaho Press-Tribune in Nampa, has stepped up its staffing and print edition.

Among the additions are two former longtime Spokane Spokesman-Review journalists: Betsy Russell (Boise statehouse/political reporter) and Greg Lee (sports editor).

 

I can see not having a sports editor and just assigning beats and having the reporters be their own editors. Only negative or only problem? Who tells the design studio what to put in the actual newspaper. You'd save a lot of money getting rid of the editors, however, somebody has to tell the designers at the design hubs what to put on the pages. I think before long we're going to have sports editors of all sized newspapers who also cover a beat. The layoffs don't seem to be stopping and that's the next step.

 

There's also a short-season A baseball team and an ECHL team.

 

There are a handful of editors (East, Midwest, West) who fill out google documents for the respective papers saying what stories they want on the front (and sometimes inside). Sometimes a "sports editor" is among them, but sometimes the "sports editor" is a one-man shop concentrating more on content producing than assigning stories to pages.

 

My old Gannett shop ditched the SE years ago and never really has figured out how to handle it.

Now they have an "Emgagement Editor" handle those SE duties. They also consider "sports" to be no different than the business beat or crime beat, so that makes it much easier. Also easier when you have what was a 6-person sports staff now a single writer with no clerks and deadlines of 5 pm, so no high schools or anything in the evening making it in print.

Horrible decisions all around, IMO, but that's the bed they've made.

 

"Burns" is right -- it's horrible. Failure to edit stories does a real disservice to the reader -- and to the writer. The young reporters at these papers won't progress as they would if someone were editing them.

 

What chain is this, McClatchy?

 

Yes.

 

The attached article mentions that in the last two years McClatchey has reduced editorial staff from 1,30 to 900 across the chain of 29 newspapers (I count Durham and Raleigh as one paper). That means each paper has about 31 staffers at a paper, many of which are quite large. Third quarter revenues of the company declined 10% and EBITDA declined 52%, Debt is still substantial. So it is hard to believe that more cuts are not coming.

At what point is there simply not enough staff to publish a newspaper. There will be basically zero local content. So the paper will merge with a competitor in order to create a staff large enough to provide at least a little content. sue

Take Ft. Worth, for example. One would think some form of consolidation with Dallas is imminent.


Newsonomics: McClatchy’s bid has been rejected. So what’s next for Tribune?

 

Raleigh (The News & Observer) and Durham (The Herald-Sun) are separate publications. Just because people fly into one airport (Raleigh-Durham International) does not mean they can - or should - be grouped together for everything else.

Had hockey writers do that with Carolina Hurricanes games at the ESA (or whatever corporation has its name on the building these days). Yes, they run a lot of the same stories. But they are separate publications.

 

Do Durham and Raleigh have any overlapping beats? Or are the assignments managed in such a way that there is no duplication. Is production done at the same facility.

My understanding, for example, is that Durham staffs Duke athletics but Raleigh does not. And Raleigh staffs everything else in sports. Is that correct?

Because I believe that if assignments are centrally managed and production centralized then you have one paper that zones, no matter what the mastheads say.

 

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The Triangle ACC schools each have an assigned beat writer. Raleigh and Durham run what they deem important to their readership. Maybe Durham puts more weight on a Duke story. Maybe Raleigh puts more weight on an N.C. State story. They might well differ as to how they play a story coming out of Chapel Hill. What is run in those papers is on an individual basis. Yes, it is produced in one facility, but that facility also produces other publications that are much more than 20-25 miles apart.

The Charlotte Observer uses some ACC stories as well as some Carolina Hurricanes stories. The N&O and Herald-Sun might run NASCAR and the Carolina Panthers. And anyone who claims the Triangle and Charlotte are identical markets is proof that a village is missing its idiot.

They have plenty of similarities, yes. But do they simply swap mastheads and pass them off as two different publications?

No. So your attempt to marginalize them by implying they are direct duplicates is invalid.