Next in Line ... Milwaukee

Thanks for unlocking it.

 

92 total gone

http://www.jsonline.com/newswatch/52436247.html

 

"We will continue to maintain our high quality local news focus and keep our audience penetration high," said Elizabeth Brenner, president and publisher of Journal Sentinel. "We will align our costs to a smaller revenue base while delivering a newspaper and other products that are attractive to our readers and advertisers. We will be responsive to the evolving mix of print and digital products our customers are looking for. Through it all, we remain committed to being the leading news gathering organization in southeastern Wisconsin."

Is she serious?

 

At least 8 in sports gone that I know about and 1 online sports producer

 

Crap. Really? That many?

How large is the sports dept?

 

Did I miss it, or did that article skim over the fact that the "voluntary wage reduction" of 6.6 percent taken in the spring "guaranteed" no further staff reductions for six months?

Oops.

 

I mean, from what I hear those being laid off are still getting paid until October before severance kicks in because of that agreement...but goes to show the leadership has no idea what they're doing and they're making promises they have no intention of keeping.

 

Fixed, unfortunately.

 

I'm past the point of being angry about this crap. Not really.

Mostly I'm just dismayed and hurt.

Knowing the personnel losses I'm having a difficult time even transcriping the tape from interviews last night.

Sucks.

 

Or it could show that the business is deteriorating even more rapidly than their worst-case scenarios forecast, which is hardly unique to newspapers. Just as one example, I believe that Macy's announced its major pullout of newspaper advertising at some point after the Journal Sentinel issued its no-reduction pledge. And if they're continuing to pay through October, it's probably a good management move -- clear the psychic debris and get on with it. Anyone who has worked somewhere with the slow drip of small layoffs knows what I'm talking about. For the employee, too, it effectively extends the length of severance and allows for re-training, job search, etc.

It seems a little unfair to lump in every management team on this score. Now those fuckers at Gannett, with their conditional severance that works against unemployment and ends the moment someone takes an $8/hr job, they can die by falling ass-first on a spindle for all I care. But to reiterate the point I made earlier, if you're getting a year or more of walkaway money in a dying industry, is that bad? Seems to me that they're doing what they can for employees.

On my previous post I wondered why anyone would want to pass up the severance and give the company a year's work for free. One of the responses calculated a year of wages against 10 years of ongoing wages. I don't know why anyone would believe they could get 10 more years, or even three, at anything close to the wages they're receiving now.

 

The numbers of the cuts in sports keep getting higher. I've learned of a ninth full-timer, plus I think all the part-time agate people a well. Someone roughly estimated half of sports is gone; hard to deny that looking at those numbers.

 

92 freaking people? Holy shit ...