The Olympian now 171 employees, according to the report. A source at The Olympian tells me it looks like advertising and the newsroom will stay in Olympia for now, but it wouldn't be a surprise if eventually most advertising was handled out of Tacoma. No employees at The Olympian are thrilled about commuting to Tacoma -- the commute from Olympia to Tacoma can be an hour each way. Also some employees have purchased homes south of Olympia, meaning their commute could be well over an hour.The McClatchy Co. announced Friday that The Olympian will be printed at The News Tribune in Tacoma starting in early November.
The change was announced by Olympian President and Publisher John Winn Miller in an e-mail sent to staff members.
Eight jobs will be affected, Miller said. Three employees could be transferred to Tacoma, and the company hopes to avoid layoffs by seeking volunteers for severance packages.
"The move has both operational and financial advantages," Miller said."By printing in Tacoma, it would be possible to deliver The Olympian earlier in most areas and the newspaper could avoid future capital expenses. The News Tribune has more than enough press capacity to print both newspapers."
McClatchy's flagship paper, The Sacramento Bee, prints The Modesto Bee, and McClatchy papers in Bellingham and Boise also will be printed at different locations starting next year.
The Olympian will continue to print USA Today.
McClatchy has been seeking greater efficiency the past year because of an industrywide downturn in print advertising.
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From comments:
Eight positions is just the tip of the iceberg... when those 8 pressmen are gone, so will prepress and the majority of distribution (other that what's necessary to get the USA Today out).
Previous:
Olympian/News Tribune update -- McClatchy's plans to regionalize are moving forward... more layoffs coming later this year?
Prediction: McClatchy will regionalize newspapers
8 comments:
Does anyone including the folks that run this site have a clue what running business is like? It's so easy to point fingers and make biased accusations when you spend most of your time bashing instead of understanding. When page counts falter and advertising slows down are you expecting companies to sit back and wait to close or should they take steps to stay open and survive. The employees that continue to work for McClatchy do so because they have families to raise, bills to pay and a life to live. NO ONE is happy about doing more with less and everyone that is still employed understands that to some degree. I can only assume and I apologize for that, that this site is primarily ran and kept afloat by former McClatchy employees with an axe to grind. I wonder if these folks took a buy-out, were fired or quit? It's a shame that it affected your life enough to not only promote but search for negativity within the McClatchy organization. To make negative remarks or stereotype current employees as non-caring or non-skilled is a slap in the face of those that come to work everyday and do whatever they must to take care of their obligations. They have nothing to do with lay-offs, wage freezes, company decisions or stocks or bonuses. Instead like most Americans, they are working through whatever they have to get by.
Dear Anonymous.... the first thing you need to do if you are going to run ia business is NOT PISS OFF HALF OF YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS EVERY TIME YOU WRITE A MINDLESS EDITORIAL.
The second thing you need to do is staff your business with people who are not left leaning anti-capitalists who think profits are evil.
And then you need to tend to your business which is to report the news in an unbiased and truthful way. That means things like indicating party affiliation when the politician who screws up is a democrat just like you do when he is a republican.
It is too bad the production and support staff is taking the hit for the arrogant assholes in the editorial rooms that are the real reason the old biased left wing media is going down the tubes.
Over the main entrance of every journalism school should be the words, "Bias = Layoffs".
Journalists can't take the same scrutiny they dish out. Hypocrites.
>if you are going to run ia business is NOT PISS OFF >HALF OF YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS EVERY TIME >YOU WRITE A MINDLESS EDITORIAL.
With all due respect, if people can't differentiate between the news pages and the editorial page, then it means something is fundamentally wrong.
The real problem is whether through accident or intent, we mislead readers on the news side, or we pass through "bias" from the wires or introduce it ourselves, we lose credibility and what reader wants to pay for that? There's too many other places you can get the news.
"With all due respect, if people can't differentiate between the news pages and the editorial page, then it means something is fundamentally wrong."
Exactly. 100% correct.
If anyone still believes this myth of separation of news and opinion they are deluded.
Anonymous at 6:00PM you understand the problem totally. There is no trust anymore. Way too many years of obvious bias in reporting and story selection have destroyed the profession.
When the MSM was the only source, they were free to do as they pleased. Now, with the internet, there are other sources and other views and the MSM no longer has a monopoly on information. They are not adapting well to the new environment.
Can they be saved? Maybe, if more people in the business are, like you, willing to look at the problem honestly without arrogance and make the changes necessary.
Eight positions is just the tip of the iceberg. I have a feeling that whoever wrote that article is trying to make it not sound like such a big deal. However, when those 8 pressmen are gone, so will prepress and the majority of distribution(other that what's necessary to get the USA Today out).
USA Today is staying because of a contract for the next several years(something tells me that McClatchy will try to get out of it), as well as Tacoma not having the expensive satellite feed and direct-to-plate equipment that this product requires.
6:37 PM wrote, "Can they be saved? Maybe, if more people in the business are, like you, willing to look at the problem honestly without arrogance and make the changes necessary."
If they had the people to save themselves they wouldn't have gotten into this situation in the first place.
The relationship between newspapers and their audience is too damaged for recovery.
Look at newspaper web sites. Same crap, different bag. Journalist blogs are the same. They do okay on their best behavior, but the urge to take cheap shots eventually overcomes even the best of them.
If they had the people to save themselves they wouldn't have gotten into this situation in the first place.
Journalists are human and they are citizens of this land, like our readers.
They are encouraged, nee trained to be idealists and have the reader's interest at heart. That's why they are in the profession.
The problem comes when personally, they lean heavily to one side of the "political" spectrum, which occasionally blinds them, thinking they are in fact, in the middle. I know what the word "objective" means, I just don't think it's applied equally by everyone in the journalism community, especially during this amped up and politically charged season to elect a president.
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