Gannett to trim national payroll by 10 percent

[Robin Garr]

No local specifics are given, but it's hard to see the Incredible Shrinking Courier-Journal escaping without further injury.

Gannett announces further cuts
Newspaper company has set target of cutting 10 percent of payroll
Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader * October 31, 2008

Gannett Co., the nation's largest newspaper publisher, has announced it will further reduce its workforce in its local newspapers division.

The latest reductions, to come by early December, follow a 3 percent cut announced in August. That cut reduced the workforce nationally by about 1,000 jobs.

Gannett isn't revealing a specific number of jobs expected to be cut in this reduction but has set a target of 10 percent of payroll.

Full story in the Springfield News-Leader

In a curious commentary on the economics of the news business, the article noted at the end that "Citi Investment Research analyst Catriona Fallon rated three newspaper publishers late Monday and assigned only Gannett a "Buy" rating. Fallon placed a "Sell" rating on The New York Times Co. and The McClatchy Co."

That's how economics works in our times, boys and girls: If greatness costs extra bucks, the stockholders would much rather cut quality than profits.

Wont be long before the Courier Journal becomes a one page wrapper for USA Today.

Thank God for blogs

Print media is doomed. The internet slayed it.

[Robin Garr]

Print media is doomed. The internet slayed it.

Let's take a more nuanced view: Television changed radio, but it did not slay radio. Now the Internet is changing print media, but we don't know where it will come out.

To my delight, The CJ doesn't seem to have ever had a clue how to use the Web effectively, so they're on a sinking ship with a leaky lifeboat. Perhaps they're trying to save themselves by littering our neighborhoods with those awful pink and green bags with free throwaway newspapers inside.

Print has been around for a long time. To Robins point it has lasted through radio and TV. It won't totally go away, it'll just morph into something else. Daily papers , I think, will be a thing of the past if for no other reason because of the expense. Most weeklies across the nation are seeing a growth in their readership. LEO's readership grows steadily.( I think it's important to note that unlike what Gannet does, LEO gauges their paper's readership separately from their online readership. I noticed in 2 separate ads in the CJ that as they tout their readership they lump their paper readership in with their on line readership. Well, in my mind, if you're cutting as much as CJ is then your numbers aren't up. I think that is horribly deceptive.) Weeklies will stay around for a while if for no other reason than they are free and still more portable then a laptop. 10 or 15 years from now as imacs and pcs keep improving, well, i dunno, we'll see.

[Robin Garr]

Weeklies will stay around for a while if for no other reason than they are free and still more portable then a laptop. 10 or 15 years from now as imacs and pcs keep improving, well, i dunno, we'll see.

It's getting close, Carla. I read The New York Times about 10 percent in print, 60 percent on my computer and 30 percent on my iPhone.

The Christian Science Monitor has ceased printing all together. They were one of the first publications to incorporate a web site into their publishing.

I admit, print will diminish considerably but it won't go away. It'll just thin out the herd. Reading is such an intimate thing. You simply don't get the same experience from looking at a screen that you get from holding, touching, turning the pages of a paper. I think that why there's been so much attention given to online sites to make the online experience as similar to a real life experience. (ie ... clicking on a corner tab and the page on screen actually looks like it's turning. Stuff like that.)
So printed materials may revert back to what they were in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, that is something for the eccentric to collect and enjoy. (In which case LEO will no doubt keep their name! )

To my delight, The CJ doesn't seem to have ever had a clue how to use the Web effectively, so they're on a sinking ship with a leaky lifeboat.

Robin, you're right, which is particularly ironic since Barry Bingham, Jr. was at the leading edge in the earliest days of the personal computer. I seem to remember that he owned or was a backer of a very early personal computer retail store downtown (maybe on south 6th or 5th, around Chestnut or so - can't remember the name, but remember almost buying an Apple Lisa - which was the precursor to the first Mac, I think) which he got into because of his belief that the personal computer would revolutionize the newspaper business. For the understatement of the year award: We would be looking at a very diferent CJ had the Binghams not sold.

[Robin Garr]

To my delight, The CJ doesn't seem to have ever had a clue how to use the Web effectiv We would be looking at a very diferent CJ had the Binghams not sold.

You're preaching to the choir, of course, Jeffrey. I sometimes think that the sale of the newspapers was the absolute single worst thing that has happened to the city, because we've become a rudderless ship.

I only vaguely recall something about Barry's computer-store venture, but I vividly remember him predicting - as early as the 1980s - that some day the newspaper would be delivered to every reader's home on the computer, tailored to each reader's personal tastes. Most people rolled their eyes.

The Christian Science Monitor has ceased printing all together. They were one of the first publications to incorporate a web site into their publishing.

I'm pretty sure they are planning to remain a weekly (although it doesn't change your point about the decline of the newspaper biz). It's just a fact that online eyeballs are worth less than in-print eyeballs, so it's really hard for these newspaper companies to convert the web pages to $$$.

How much of a newspapers revenue from sales go to covering the costs of printing vs. staffing. Seems to me that if the ad dollars could even out printed editions are money pits, with a rapidly aging demo. What kind of P&L aree looking at with the average paper? Does it cost more to print an edition than it recovers in sales?

[Robin Garr]

It's just a fact that online eyeballs are worth less than in-print eyeballs, so it's really hard for these newspaper companies to convert the web pages to $$$.

I think the newspaper companies are sleeping in the bed they made, there. I know print media ad sales people promulgated this foolish notion as hard as they could during the years when they saw the Web as a competitor to be beat back rather than as something they belatedly realized they needed to embrace.

The CJ was just about the worst of all about this ... and now they're reaping what they sowed.

But I can tell you that when we were growing WineLoversPage.com, we didn't accept that tale about "Internet eyeballs ain't worth nuthin'," and we turned away a lot of low-balling business but brought in a lot more at premium rates, a direction that made us happy and made our advertisers happy, too.

Our business model for LouisvilleHotBytes has never relied heavily on advertising - unlike the CJ, I think it looks pretty sleazy to have restaurants paying to publish a site that does allegedly unbiased reviews. But I've often thought what fun it would be to get out there and invite a few top local eateries to switch for a month, pay us what they've been paying them, and see how it plays out.

Perhaps I should have, rather than use the word "worth," said that advertisers won't yet pay as much for online as print, regardless of the potential outcomes. At least that's what I get from what I read about the ad industry and their thinking.

The Christian Science Monitor has ceased printing all together. They were one of the first publications to incorporate a web site into their publishing.

I'm pretty sure they are planning to remain a weekly (although it doesn't change your point about the decline of the newspaper biz). It's just a fact that online eyeballs are worth less than in-print eyeballs, so it's really hard for these newspaper companies to convert the web pages to $$$.

You're right TP, they will still be publishing what they call a weekly newsletter to go out to subscribers. A newsletter sounds considerably skimpier than a paper though.