Thursday, February 5, 2009

No personal touch from McClatchy bigwigs... publishers send corporate form letter announcing cutbacks

As noted by comments in this blog, the letters sent by McClatchy publishers to their staff are form letters from corporate, with just the publisher and paper's name changed. More here.

Compare the Fort Worth Star-Telegram letter here with the Lexington Herald-Leader letter here.

UPDATE: Some personalizing in the letter from Bellingham's publisher.
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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

bellingham:

for the record, our publisher here did personalize the (mostly) form letter we received for Bellingham, but I'd venture that 90% of it is still copy/paste action.

Anonymous said...

I am just now catching up on the days news, but I didn’t see the word ‘buyout’ in the form letters, is that gone as an option now? I have also seen very few posts about Gary Pruitt. The journo writing-heads will soon be telling everyone what just happened, in their view, anyway. I don’t believe any of them.

Anonymous said...

Tidbit:
Fitz & Jen McClatchy’s Q4:
The Resssst Of The Story

The Sacramento Bee and Miami Herald parent ended the year with $2.038 billion in debt, down $433 million from the end of 2007.

http://nbm.typepad.com/fitz_jen/

Anonymous said...

Also at Fitz & Jen
“Fitz, as you so brilliantly put it, general economic conditions have gotten so bad that McClatchy can't even unload a parking lot in Miami.”

Anonymous said...

All you really need to know is that they lost 21.7 million. Combine that with 17.9, 20. and 22% drops in revenue over the past three months and you have the reason that they will no longer report their monthly declines. It is everything that they bring in will be going to pay off the interest on what they owe.

So, when the fool at the KC Star tells you how profitable they were, you'll know the real deal.

Anonymous said...

FYI in a meeting with Gary Wortel with all Star Telegram employees..... Blah blah blah

Anonymous said...

Their not using the word "buyout" they use the word transition package.