Update:
This post has been updated to note that the Dow Jones story cited has been corrected. Originally, it said that the Tribune Co. has plans to cut “another 800 jobs in 2006,” but has been corrected to say “Tribune Co. will not cut 4% of its workforce in 2006. The company will cut a total of 900 jobs in 2005, of which 800 jobs will be in the publishing unit.”
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This entry is a trainwreck:
1) Why should the company or the analysts care what 45,000 Moveon folks, who have nothing to do with the company, who would always sign a petition against a large corporation, have to say?
2) What's Orwellian about cost-effincies and focusing on cost management? What kind of sinister plot do you think they have that they're trying to cover up? That they hate employees?
We'll see if the CJR daily is any more responsive to outsiders than the Tribune is.
Posted by Joseph Weisenthal on Wed 7 Dec 2005 at 06:56 PM
Why should company analysts care about 45,000 customers signing a petition to protest planned management actions expected to downgrade prduct quality without changing product price?!
The comment author should go run a business -- a small busness where management can't be so isolated from customers -- and see how well that attitude works. Or save time (and bankruptcy) and just re-read Peter Drucker.
Posted by Jim Kornell on Sat 10 Dec 2005 at 09:12 AM
Moveon and their ilk don't have a clue as to the real world. As to the cut of staff, it is due to cuts in circulation. As to the cuts in circulation, it is due to the fact that editors will not practice balance and allow opposing views and balance in their stories, particularly on Global Warming.
Posted by johnfwd on Sat 10 Dec 2005 at 09:53 PM
As a signatory to the MoveOn petition, a longtime LA Times subscriber, and a shareholder in the Tribune Company, I believe that I have a perfect right to inform the Tribune Company that their practices are not to my liking. The untimely dismissal of Robert Scheer, for example, is just the thin edge of the wedge for their "restructuring."
Posted by jkcohen on Sat 10 Dec 2005 at 11:00 PM
As another signatory to the MoveOn petition, a subscriber to the Chicago Tribune and a shareholder I object to the charaterization above. The "need" for this cost cut being based on lowered circ maybe true but, I see it more as based on reaping merely "insufficient" profits. I am a businessman and fully comprehend the need to always be vigilant about expense control - but, excuse me a publishing division with 600 million in profits that cuts 800 jobs, (at $125k per) could INCREASE profits by over 100 million - and I do "get" the math. The question is the VALUE that might be diminshed by such cuts. Asking if there are not other ways to save then by removing a crucial piece of the news gathering enterprise is a VERY legitimate question for a SHAREHOLDER and customer to ask. What ever happened to the concept of a free press having a role in society the is based on something other than pure profit motive? Should there not be more as stake here?
Posted by jlarryb on Wed 14 Dec 2005 at 06:07 PM
Readers who pontificate upon the hard-nosed reality of running a business as a defense of the Tribune Company’s decision to let go 800 or 900 workers, could really benefit from actually speaking to someone who works at a Tribune paper.
I have a friend who works for a Tribune paper that has recently enjoyed a profit, a paper which has increased its readership. Her paper’s popularity hasn’t stopped her Chicago overlords at Tribune headquarters from firing people in her newsroom. She and her colleagues are being asked to work more with a smaller support staff because newspapers in the Tribune family in other areas of the country are losing eyeballs to some tough competition.
At my friend’s paper, the threat of losing one’s job demoralized both the main and satellite newsrooms. Why work hard, the thinking goes, if you’re going to get fired because someone else, at some other paper, contributed to lost market share or didn’t sell enough ad space? Constantly worrying about losing one’s job creates an atmosphere where it is hard to efficiently gather the news.
The reason why that should matter to those of us who don’t work at Tribune is that Tribune, besides being a for-profit business, it is also a public service. Readers of the Tribune papers need to know what is going on and a smaller news staff really is less able to present the news.
Posted by skeptic on Tue 20 Dec 2005 at 05:59 PM