The Gannett Company, owner of the nation’s largest newspaper chain, will go through another round of layoffs soon, with an announcement possible in the next few days, executives said Tuesday.
The company’s United States and British newspaper divisions eliminated more than 10,000 jobs in 2007 and 2008, including about 2,000 layoffs last fall, and Gannett executives have said repeatedly that they expect more downsizing, including layoffs. The company, which also owns a chain of television stations and Internet ventures, ended last year with 41,500 employees, including 35,800 in its newspaper divisions. [Click for MORE]
Gannett Blog has been following the decline of America's largest newspaper company for months. It is shutting down July 10. Take a look before it goes dark.
Because of the credit crisis, an unfortunate bunching of credit maturities and a debilitating number of so-called negative-basis trades featuring credit-default swaps -- all in addition to the industry's secular and cyclical downturns -- Gannett as we know it will be lucky to last through June 2011. "They painted themselves into a corner," the distressed-debt expert says of Gannett management. "They have to raise more than $400 million between now and the middle of 2011 in a market where, frankly, many of their bondholders would rather they default." [Full STORY]Sphere: Related Content
Gannett Co. is forcing most of its U.S. employees to take another week of unpaid leave this year as the largest U.S. newspaper publisher prepares for its rapidly sinking advertising revenue to extend its slide during the second quarter.
The furloughs spelled out Monday in a company memo must be taken before July and are designed to spread the pain through Gannett without the need for further layoffs.
The McLean, Virginia-based company jettisoned about 4,000 jobs, or about 10 percent of its work force, last year to survive a slump that has seen more than $1.1 billion in annual advertising revenue evaporate since 2006. [Click for MORE]
Gannett Co. slashed its quarterly dividend 90% to 4 cents a share in an effort to strengthen its balance sheet, following the steps of other media companies in curtailing payments to shareholders.
Newspapers have been hammered in recent years by the rise of the Internet, coupled with a sluggish advertising market. Now, the economic crisis threatens to be a mortal blow to some publishers. Four newspaper owners have filed for bankruptcy protection since December, and privately held Hearst Corp. warned Tuesday it may have to close the San Francisco Chronicle if it isn't able to slash costs at the paper within weeks.
The dividend cut by Gannett - the nation's largest newspaper publisher and the parent company of USA Today - will save the company more than $325 million a year.
Shares dropped 6.1% to $3.52 in after-hours trading and have lost 82% of their value since August. [Click for MORE]
Gannett's flagship once hoped to beat The International Herald Tribune in grabbing well-heeled American travelers overseas, and the ad dollars that often follow. But that idea has died for good, tipsters say, now that USA Today is pulling the plug on its money-losing foreign editions. The European one dies Jan. 30. [Click for MORE]Sphere: Related Content
A memo just released by CEO Craig Dubow, confirming recent speculation that Gannett will require about 35,000 U.S. workers to take a week off without pay in this quarter. There's now an FAQ. Plus, newspaper division chief Bob Dickey has issued a memo, too.[Click for MORE]
In a fresh sign of its worsening finances, the nation's biggest newspaper publisher is quietly testing a new service that it expects will replace the Associated Press at its 84 U.S. newspapers, a memo obtained by Gannett Blog says. [Click for MORE]
USA Today won't give pay raises in 2009. That's from a memo Publisher Craig Moon reportedly just sent to the No. 1 circulation newspaper's employees, regarding Gannett's announcement that about 35,000 U.S. workers will be required to take a week off without pay during the current quarter. USAT's move is effective Feb. 1. "This includes me, your department head -- everyone,'' Moon says.
Gannett rolls out ContentOne as a prepackaged national news web page for all Gannett community newspapers. The first test page covers the Inauguration of Barack Obama. [Click for MORE]Sphere: Related Content
Here comes The New York Times, now reporting: "The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News are planning to stop home delivery most days of the week and print a pared-down version of their papers for newsstands on those days, according to people briefed on the plans. They will be the first major dailies in the country to take such drastic steps."
The Wall Street Journalreported earlier that Gannett hasn't made a final decision. The paper cites a source it did not identify. "But the leading scenario set to be unveiled Tuesday would call for the Free Press and its partner paper, The Detroit News, to end home delivery on all but the most lucrative days -- Thursday, Friday and Sunday," the WSJ says. "On the other days, the publisher would sell single copies of an abbreviated print edition at newsstands and direct readers to the papers' expanded digital editions."
The changes are likely to result in significant job cuts, the story says. "Because the Detroit papers will continue to publish daily electronic versions, the cuts are expected to come mostly, if not entirely, from outside the newsroom, according to sources," the WSJ says.
Under an agreement this week with labor unions, Gannett'sbroadcast flagship will become the first station in a major market to replace crews with one-person "multimedia journalists," who shoot and edit stories single-handedly, The Washington Postsays today. The station -- which is running last in the local ratings -- also plans an across-the-board cut in reporters' salaries as it increases their responsibilities. Multimedia journalists will earn 30% to 50% less than what traditional reporters have been earning, with salaries topping out at around $90,000 annually, the Post says, citing sources it doesn't identify at the station.
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Or, we could subtitle this post, “the numbers at Gannett leak out, and they reinforce what Gannett veterans already knew.”
That is, Gannett never has owned newspapers. By its own preferred corporate-speak, it has owned “profit centers” — and the greedy bastards who ran the company were bold enough to call it just that. [Click for MORE]
The largest U.S. newspaper publisher and owner of USA Today, the nation’s biggest-selling daily paper, is slashing payroll just in time for the holidays. We read about layoffs everywhere these days, but if you want to see the slow-motion car crash version of how Gannett is doing it, look to Gannett Blog, run by former company reporter Jim Hopkins. [Click for MORE]
The original opening of the TV show "Lou Grant" began with a bird in a tree, the tree chopped down, the wood turned to paper, paper delivered to a publishing plant. Newspapers came off the presses, were delivered, read and then used to line a bird's cage.
That was 31 years ago. If it seemed quaintly inefficient then, it still is, only more so—last night's stories put in your hands this morning at great effort and expense, then disposed of shortly thereafter.
So the Christian Science Monitor's announcement Tuesday that it is largely abandoning print for the Internet in April—giving up daily press runs in favor of a beefed-up Web site, complemented by daily e-mail editions and a weekly print magazine—is intriguing. [Click for MORE]
The financial turmoil is adding headaches for troubled newspaper publishers.
The Star Tribune said Wednesday it skipped a debt payment as the Minneapolis newspaper tries to restructure $430 million in borrowings. Publisher Chris Harte indicated the company is testing all options with its lenders.
Gannett Co., the country's largest newspaper publisher, meanwhile said Wednesday it had tapped its credit line as short-term financing markets stall. And alternative weekly publisher Creative Loafing Inc. filed for Chapter 11 this week. [Click for MORE]
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"[Edna's] idea of a successful lead is one that might cause a reader who is having breakfast with his wife to 'spit out his coffee, clutch his chest, and say, "My God, Martha! Did you read this!"' When Edna went to Fort Lauderdale not long ago to talk about police reporting with some of the young reporters in the Herald's Broward County bureau, she said, 'For sanity and survival, there are three cardinal rules in the newsroom:Never trust an editor, never trust an editor, never trust an editor.'" --Calvin Trillin's profile of legendary Miami Herald cops reporter Edna Buchanan, The New Yorker, 1986
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