Saturday, January 31, 2009

Rumors of more McClatchy layoffs heating up (bumped)

The comments section on this blog is heating up -- my readers are reporting several McClatchy newspapers are expected to make announcements next week about cutbacks.

Things are about to boil over at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (see here and here). The Sacramento Bee newsroom is hearing layoffs in Sacramento could be be announced next week. Rumors are flying at the Kansas City Star, too. One anonymous commenter said employees are walking on eggshells. Another said morale is so bad productivity has dropped to near zero.

Cutbacks could include furloughs, reduction of hours, and layoffs.

What are you hearing?

UPDATE: From comments, excellent advice on taking a buyout:
If you take a buy out...I said this before...get it in a lump sum. If they give bi monthly pay outs, then go bankrupt, you will be considered a creditor and you wont get JACK!
.
.

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

For the Marxist who the dangling sword of Damocles falls on next week, may the first cut merely maim and allow you to see the American blood you’ve spilled.

Keep repeating: “Fries with that sir?”

Anonymous said...

"He's Dead, Jim"

Anonymous said...

Just remember this McClatchyism...It's not a lay off, were are giving you a "Transition Package".
BTW it's more like the dangling sword of testicles...Pruitt has no cahones!

Anonymous said...

McClatchy Watch. What about listing each paper for the employees to post the rumors they hear at their paper? Maybe we can get a better picture how wide spread the rumors are. Also what they are hearing.

nick said...

20 Employees at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram may lose job and mcclatchy may kill the Fort Worth Star-Telegram McClatchy is clear channel of newspapers industry

Anonymous said...

Rumors are running rampant at the Kansas City Star as well. So many numbers and various types of layoff plans involving all areas of the paper.

Whatever the outcome next week this may be the most painful cuts so far

Anonymous said...

I am so glad to be out of the newspaper industry..Management is cutting so much talent, that even when the economy gets better...newspapers won't recover

Anonymous said...

Chum in the water time.

Anonymous said...

If you are smart_OLD_GO

If you are young_clueless_STAY

Cut salaries and benefits_put more money in corporate for bonuses.

Don't worry that everyone hates the stupid web sites that cannot compete with the savvy sites out there.

The McClathy Way

Anonymous said...

I noticed two interesting blog ads today. It may be newspaper companies have another day of reckoning. I wonder how many legal battles are organized already?
------------
Gannett Layoff
Know Your Layoff Rights
Employment Lawyers
(www. address)
-----------
Severance Pay Advice?
Free Consultations
Legal Experts
Get A Great Severance
(www.---------)

Anonymous said...

Anon 10:44. Various types of layoffs? Example please.

Anonymous said...

The KC Red Star, continues to pay for columns from a so-called journalist, that is nothing more than a one-trick pony, flame-throwing racist. Howinhell is that fair? Things will never get better at the Scar. Outright nepotism, that McClatchy chooses NOT to correct, is dishonest. I have to wonder what the SOB publisher says to employees before he shitcans them.

Anonymous said...

On a previous thread, a poster wrote:
"Its pretty much a given MNI will not only offer some type of major cost cutting but also ask the employees to take time off without pay."

How many times are we going to read it is time off, or layoff? I have heard the first furlough will be a week, and the papers keep running, and then another, and another furlough…..until everyone realizes they took a 50% pay cut. However, the presses roll!

Anonymous said...

OK 50% cut still better than unemployment??? Most everybody left working at the papers were offered a buyout. Maybe they should have taken it and got on with their life. It will never get better. Sorry.

Anonymous said...

If you take a buy out...I said this before...get it in a lump sum. If they give bi monthly pay outs, then go bankrupt, you will be considered a creditor and you wont get JACK!

Anonymous said...

If you do take the buy out make sure you pay taxes on it or everyone will think you are trying for a position in the new ethical, transparent, enlightened and progressive government of Chicago Obama The First, praised be his name.

Anonymous said...

Buyout, Shmyout.

Look at the positives. As a Marxist taking your lumps, I mean your lump sum, you get the chance to relate to all the little people you wrote about.

Or try this one on. You might even feel like one of the people Uncle Bernie Madoff touched.

Anonymous said...

@ Seeking Alpha,
You can read the Gannett Co. Inc.
Q4 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

It may be a canary in the mine warning sort of thing.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/117736-gannett-co-inc-q4-2008-earnings-call-transcript?page=-1

Anonymous said...

I wish some honest journalists would come forth and say they knew McClatchy’s reporting was biased. I could feel a lot more confident about the future of journalism if it would return to its needed place in a free society. The sad dishonest shell we see now, of a former great profession, is a devastating disappointment.

Anonymous said...

A blogger wrote about forcing employee’s to take days off (accepting lower pay) as a very shrewd move. It kept the workforce dangling, and from filing for unemployment benefits.

I am not quite sure what the not ‘filing for unemployment benefits’ part means?

nick said...

McClatchy purchased Knight Ridder was bad deal for newspaper Industry AH Belo Corporation, which owns The Dallas Morning News and three other daily newspapers, announced Friday it would cut approximately 500 jobs The A. H. Belo Corporation his stake in the Dallas Mavericks basketball team Gannett Co. said Friday that its board would explore a dividend cut next month as the nation's largest newspaper publisher looks to conserve cash.

To offset steep declines in advertising revenue, Gannett laid off thousands of employees late last year and imposed a one-week unpaid furlough during the current quarter.

But the board opted in October to leave the quarterly dividend rate at 40 cents a share "to see what the impact of a burgeoning credit crisis and more difficult economic conditions would bring," said Gracia Martore, the company's chief financial officer.

At the current level, Gannett spends about $365 million annually on dividends. That amounts to a trailing dividend yield of 23 percent, with Gannett's stock closing Thursday at $6.90.

"The next time the board has to act on the dividend is in February, and I know that there will be significant conversation around that in the context of where credit markets are, where the economies are, and where cash conservation comes into play across the country," Martore said. "So we will take that up with the board again in February and we will act appropriately."

Debt at Gannett, widely regarded as one of the most fiscally sound newspaper publishers, stood at $3.8 billion at year's end, a figure expected to decline to $3.7 billion by March

Anonymous said...

Excerpt from Gannett transcript:
We had severance expenses in both quarters of 2008 and 2007, and we also had a small [impairment charge] in last year's fourth quarter.

I wonder what the [impairment charge] will be for MNI?
An expert here explained that it is not a good thing.

Anonymous said...

Posted on YAHOO MNI stock message board

On Monday, January 26,. 2009, our fearless CEO disposed of 35,700 shares of stock at a price of 70 cents per share.


Two days later the company announces it will be suspending the dividend after the last and final payout for the first Q. Nice strategic timing Gary, well done.

Anonymous said...

Rumor in Comments: graphic designr:
Pittsburgh Trib in PA
…some of my former coworkers that are still there told me Monday that they came in to see an envelope with their buyout offer on their desk.
if they take it, they get so many months pay, plus all their vacation and so many months of health insurance continuance. If they don’t take it they get NOTHING. No vacation pay. No extended pay. No insurance extension. NOTHING.
Apparently they can do that.

http://graphicdesignr.net/blog/2009/01/27/layoff-toll-keeps-climbing/

Anonymous said...

This is a snip from a blog comment: Anyone know what this is all about?

“When real editors and writers were being laid off a few years ago, the “new media” folks and designers were cheering this as progress. Now that they are on the firing line, they pretend this didn’t happen. But it did.”

Anonymous said...

This is a snip from a blog comment: Anyone know what this is all about.
------------------
Sure. The current crop, in the most recent round of layoffs were actually the SCABS and replacement workers who started in the industry after the corporate cartel was allowed to take over the entire print industry during the late 70's and 80's. Their first order of business was to bust the unions and fire anyone they deemed making too much money. This opened the door for the scum in place today that have completely bastardized print journalism for all time.

The people crying now were the college grads, with the smug know it all, be damned with you, attitude that they complain about losing their jobs to today.

In a way, there is a great deal of justice in what is happening to them. In another, it is kind of sad. One way or another, there are a lot of people being tossed out on their ears, that know in the back of their minds, that they were warned.