McClatchy to Declare Bankruptcy?

Do you think it’s legit?

 

Have no idea. Not really a big deal either way for the people I work with. Thirteen months ago when they restructured our department, most people took massive pay cuts that dropped their salaries around those "minimum" figures anyway. At best it would be a few extra dollars per paycheck.

 

It sounds like this is only for reporters.

 

Ah. My theory was that maybe it only applied to management - I think Rhode Island recently enacted a law where if you classify someone as a manager and aren't paying them hourly, their minimum salary had to be like $40k or $45k. (A couple of us got back pay for Sundays too, because another thing with it was that if you worked Monday through Friday or five days a week, anything else had to be OT pay, to try to ding companies like Dunkin' Donuts and Wal-mart that were scheduling people seven days a week, four or less hour shifts.)

 

I can confirm. Larger markets is $45,000 minimum; $42,000 in the smaller markets. The goal is to help recruit talent and hopefully keep people longer. It's an important commitment to make. I'm glad they're raising the floor rather than the ceiling.

 

That would explain why we didn't hear anything (we're somehow grouped with "corporate"). I'm fully expecting my annual 0% raise in a few weeks.

 

What an indictment that is on the industry if they think 45k in a large market is gonna attract talent

 

I was making $45k as a not-very-senior employee in a large newsroom ... in 1997.

 

Beginning in March Gannett closing its printing plant in Louisville, where McClatchy's Lexington Herald-Leader is printed. Lexington's paper will be printed in Knoxville. It currently has the latest local deadline of any McClatchy paper (9:40 p.m. ET). That will change.

 

Hutchinson is Gannett/Gatehouse, so they'll get to enjoy making money by printing a rival paper.

However, I do feel it's a matter of time before Gannett decides to merge its Southwest Kansas properties (Hutch, Garden City, Dodge City, Pratt among others) into one paper that covers the entire area. Right now, I don't think the Garden City paper even has an office*and it's been going with a skeleton staff since late last year. At the very least, Garden City and Dodge City could be easily merged. And Hutchinson once covered the entirety of the area, so adding it to a merger would sort of take the News back to its roots.

Northern Kansas might see a merger of the Hays, Salina and Topeka papers. And I think it's possible Pittsburg, Miami, Okla., and whatever's left in Southwest Missouri** could even be combined into one paper that attempts to rival the Joplin Globe.

* - 310 N. 7th is still listed on its web site, but that building's been empty since the summer and no one seems to know where a new office is.
** - Carthage was closed a couple of years back and I don't know if any other properties are in that area other than Neosho.

 

When I saw that McClatchy was moving print for Kansas City ro Des Moines I thought they were just were going to milk what was left out of each paper. But now the company ahs decided to give journalists a pay bump which leads me to believe they are going to try to make it as a digital company. And if they are going to try to make it digital I wonder if they will beef up their Kansas website. A question the big metros have to decide is how much money are they going to spend chasing additional electronic subscribers in smaller cities. But I read in the Gatehouse 10-K that a good statewide website offers tough competition for the website of a small, local publisher. So as print revenues decline in these small towns electronic revenues don't increase because of competition from the big city websites so I don't think the life expectancy of most of those papers is very long.

In a totally unrelated note I am from Denver. My Dad's sales territory was from Denver back to the Kansas City metro area. He drove 60,000 miles a year through the towns you mention and I remember him talking about them.

 

Born in Garden City and moved back here in June. The Telegram is an extremely pitiful newspaper now. At one point a year ago, the e-mail contact addresses for EVERY department except advertising were for the staff photographer, who I believed was writing almost all the stories himself. Maybe he had help with layout from Hutch or Dodge, but I don't know. Anyway, the photographer is still writing sports stories and I think maybe there's a single reporter on the news side. There's no managing editor, at least not locally.

When you look at the Telegram, you might see a local story on the front. But you'll also see a lot of stories sent in from other Kansas GH papers. People in Garden City are probably reading just as much about things in Pratt and Hays as they are about local things.

I read the Telegram in high school and college before I moved away. It was a great paper. Now it's a zombie wandering until someone finishes it off with a headshot.