McClatchy layoffs?

Seeing some Twitter mentions of layoffs in Sacramento. Don't know much more than that, but will update only when I get some definitive news.

 

What will McClatchy do? You can lay off all the people you want, but they are close to having not enuf people to have a product at all? Will they be the first to go all online to save $$ that way? Firing all the designers, copy editors in that scenario?

 

Tell us the horror stories of what your company has done to drop to a C-; Thanks.

 

Will reply by PM.

 

Not the way they're doing it ... they got rid of all the online staff at Charlotte, save for one person who works evenings/early morning ... all that work has been shifted to the designers/copy editors now ...

 

Not much interest in golf in Hilton Head, right?

 

Geezus. What is that company's vision? Looking at their websites compared to their dying print editions you get the feeling they are one of the chains most interested in dumping the print product and going all online. Then they do that in Charlotte? Now don't get me wrong. That's a Gannett-like move, to dump the online work on the print people who have to produce the daily newsprint product anyway. To simply shit on them so to speak. That's the logical move if you want to hack bodies: stack piles of extra work on the folks who have to lay out the actual newspaper. But this is NOT what you do if you are trying to build a new online powerhouse company.

 

That is not what's happening.

All online work is basically done by the assigning editors (1A editor, sports editor, etc.). The "print people" are ONLY responsible for rewriting the online heads as necessary and making the stories and captions fit the print specs (they are told NOT to do a hard edit, just to read enough to make the print head work and trim the story at an acceptable place).

IF the print people spot an egregious error that needs to be fixed online, they send an alert e-mail out, and the story is fixed and reposted by others.

Print people are working for 11 newspapers. Zero online work is demanded of them.

 

I think McClatchy will continue to cut and cut and hope at some point revenues stabilize. The McClatchy family has controlled the company for 150+ years. While the value of the company has declined from 748 to 9 in 13 years I think the family still has emotional ties and hopes for a turnaround.

 

Someone who works at McClatchy told me their method of how they decided who gets laid off: web hits. Didn't matter who you were or how long you'd been there, if you weren't getting a certain amount of clicks, you got axed. Makes since in Shain's case. He never stood a chance. His audience is made up of a lot of retirees, the generation of folks who still prefer to read a printed paper and don't use a computer. Now those same people don't have a golf writer and hence won't want to buy the paper anymore. Wonderful business model, isn't it?

 

Web hits. I'm still a little skeptical that web hits are going to lead to enough ads to justify a newspaper''s existence in the future. I guess it's all up to advertisers. Do they give a darn about how many clicks a newspaper article gets?

 

And the lack of an online-only staff is showing on the webpages ... seeing a LOT more AP stuff on the main sports page, and even AP copy that has nothing to do with sports ... that's stuff that didn't happen before the layoffs ...