Strib to cut 145 positions

Like monelia in a cancer patient. Which is next?

 

i think i'll go have a smoke, plug into simon and garfunkel and fight off the urge to blanket my resume to PR firms on a national level.

at some point in time, all these cuts puts the ceiling at our feet.

 

There are hundreds of small papers that already have perfected "streamline work processes" Part of me thinks a lot of major metros have too many employees already.

That said, I'm against any job cuts to make the profit margin grow from high to higher. Maybe management should figure out the right way to approach the changing times before fucking up 145 lives.

 

shaggy - i enjoy reading papers with "too many employees." i'm not a joe friday reader. i enjoy variety.

 

Circling the Drain.

Look, there's still a place for print media, at least until electronic paper gets in wide use. It's just really ergonomically easy to read print on a lightweight, handy to stow object, rather than a screen.

Newspapers just need to find the right balance between digital/virtual and analog/actual content, and get the business model right.

Making Lileks so uncomfy he has to jump ship (thereby saving them the cost of a redundancy package) only makes sense if they want to reach the Nutroots, the Truthers and 9-11 conspiracy theorists, those who are alienated by anything not far to the Lunar Left.

I guess circulation will go below 300,000 though, as a lot of their readership was out of state.

Heck, I'm Australian, and the only reason anyone here has heard of the Strib was Lileks' columns.

 

i hate seeing people lose their livelihoods especially in journalism. it was my former career and i saw so many passionate people in the business.

that said, i know a lot of people at the strib. the newsroom is bloated beyond belief. there are way too many mid-level editors and team leaders or whatever they're being called now.

 

But in many cases, the huigher up the food chain, the fewer cuts...

 

Somehow, I don't see PR in your future, Tom.

 

true but the story on the strib web site says they are cutting five editorial writer positions. they currently have 12 editorial writers (i guess it might include editorial editors; it wasn't clear). i think seven full-time staffers in editorial is more than sufficient. that's the kind of bloat i was thinking about.

 

I thought you meant the mid-level editors/team leaders...

 

yeah my bad. it's bloated all around. they have three people covering health care. that's awesome because health care is important. but do they need three people doing it? one is probably too few but two is enough.

anyway i don't want anyone to think i think the downsizing is a good idea. i'm just saying that the strib and some bigger papers have so many layers that (unfortunately for those who find themselves out of a job) they can afford to be streamlined.