Advance Publications’s remorseless campaign to impose a free-online content model on its regional newspapers exacted another heavy toll with the Cleveland Plain Dealer today eliminating the jobs of about 50 journalists, about a third of its already shrunken newsroom—and more, according to the union, than even the company had said it would.
Rollie Dreussi, executive secretary of the union that represents the paper’s newsroom, tells me that, while the situation is still fluid, it’s almost certain that the company has reneged on a promise to keep at least 110 union jobs in the Plain Dealer newsroom.
“We think they did lie to us,” he says.
A handful of Plain Dealer reporters and their supporters took to marching in front of the newspaper yesterday with signs saying that the newspaper had lied to them
In a story in Crain’s Cleveland Business, Terry Eggers, the Plain Dealer’s publisher and president and chief executive of the paper’s parent company, denies allegations of bad faith. I asked him for comment on the exact number of newsroom jobs that will be left after the layoffs, but an assistant sent an answer that was non-responsive. The statement does say that the company will share more about its future plans starting Sunday.
On Monday, August 5th, we chart a new course to ensure that we are positioned to be a viable business in an effort to better meet the needs of our community and remain Northeast Ohio’s number one source for news and information in today’s changing media environment. We will be sharing a preview of the changes with our readers in a guide that will be included with The Plain Dealer on Sunday, August 4th.
The layoffs in Cleveland are part of a long-running and painful restructuring across Advance’s newspaper assets that features deep newsroom cuts while shifting the resources to (non-union) digital companion companies geared entirely toward delivering news for free on the Internet. The restructuring started with a pilot program in Michigan in 2009 and was implemented, ham-fistedly, at Advance-owned New Orleans Times-Picayune and its Alabama papers. For background, read Ryan Chittum’s seminal story from CJR in March.
In April, Advance announced similar plans for Cleveland, including the creation of a new digital startup, Northeast Ohio Media Group, and promises of sharp cutbacks on the print product, delivering the full paper only three days a week, along with layoffs.
The plucky and useful Save the Plain Dealer Facebook page says this about company’s latest move in a post this morning:
The dismissals were unnecessary. They were driven by greed, fear and a disastrous inability on the part of the newspaper’s senior management and billionaire owners to creatively respond to the challenges facing journalism in the digital age.
Just so. We’ve argued for years, in many contexts, that a model that gives away free online content that it charges for in print, relying mainly on digital ads for online revenue, is a disaster for legacy news organizations with their huge fixed costs and expensive—and valuable—newsrooms. The model may be fine in many contexts, but for mature newspaper companies it has shown no potential for the kind of growth needed to make up for falling print ad revenue and fails to shore up subscription revenues via metered paywalls, now adopted by across the country and around the world.
typical circle jerk from cjr. why not tell it like it is?
#1 Posted by vonlasching, CJR on Thu 1 Aug 2013 at 03:59 PM
Gannett -- even with its new paywalls -- cut 150 just today. In 2012, there were 2,600 jobs cuts, according to ASNE. The Advocate, the paper that's being cheered by many for expanding in New Orleans, recently announced it is offering buyouts to "rightsize." Even CJR has had to cutback its staff this year, according to Poynter. No matter the company/nonprofit, these are tough decisions that upend people's lives, but that's the unfortunate reality in the entire world of journalism today. What Advance is doing is trying to remake its newsrooms/advertising depts in order to become viable long-term, making its bet, far bigger than most, on growing digital. Yet CJR seems fixated on Advance, conveniently ignoring or downplaying these others. But honestly this whole debate misses the real issue -- how all these companies can figure out how to best serve and create a business from their local/regional advertisers. If local/regional media companies can't learn how to deliver on that in the 21st century, paywalls, porous or otherwise, won't preserve anything. That's not as sexy as focusing on what's happening to newsrooms, but it's the story that deserves much more attention and depth and at the end of day will largely determine the extent we'll have professional reporting across our country.
#2 Posted by wag the dog, CJR on Thu 1 Aug 2013 at 11:12 PM