The Tri-City Herald says it has laid off 3 employees and will reduce wages for most employees.
The Tri-City Herald announced a wage cut for employees and other changes on Friday as the newspaper responds to reductions in advertising caused by the national recession..
Readers also are seeing changes as the Herald has reduced pages as businesses have reduced advertising, which provides most of the newspaper's revenue. The Herald prints an approximate mix of 58 percent news and 42 percent advertising each day.
Three Herald employees who work in its commercial printing division, which prints products for other businesses, were given layoff notices Friday. The Herald has 202 employees.
Other changes, including the wage cut, are planned that will save enough money to retain 34 employees, said Publisher Rufus M. Friday. "Our business is just not recession proof," he said.
Ad revenue has dropped as advertisers adopt a "wait and see" attitude because of the recession, he said.
In addition, the Herald is feeling the pain of losing three large advertisers that each were spending more than $100,000 with the Herald annually. Washington Mutual, Joe's Sports & Outdoors and Circuit City all filed for bankruptcy. At the same time, the cost of newsprint has jumped 20 percent.
Circulation has remained relatively steady, however. It's down 1.5 percent this year after a price increase and a halt to carrier delivery in some outlying areas of the Mid-Columbia, Friday said.
The wage cuts announced Friday include a 2.5 percent reduction for workers making $25,000 to $49,999 and a 5 percent cut for those making over $50,000. The publisher will take a 10 percent pay cut, he said.
Those making less than $25,000 or working part time will not have pay cuts.
In addition, no management performance bonuses will be paid this year. A previously announced yearlong wage freeze for all employees will be extended three months through the end of 2009.
If financial conditions do not improve, the Herald will consider furloughs, or mandatory unpaid leave for employees, later in the year.
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14 comments:
First Bellingham. Then Tri-Cities. Here in Tacoma, word is that our Obama-loving bosses are going to drop the hammer and hard on the working comrades come Monday as the TNT merges staffs with the Olympian. Off the record, one senior politburo member confided that cuts will be "shockingly deep" and that "jaws will drop" on Bloody Monday. A couple team leaders, a fistful of reportrs and half the copy desk and a sports columnist should be among the worried working stiffs. Shame they don't cut the entire editorial board for its shameless championing of the liberal agenda that's got us in thi awful mess. Morituri te salutant!
What is wrong with assholes like anom807? Dude, you so need a gasoline enema. What purpose does crap like you spew beget? It does nothing but show what a little linded troll you are. So your side lost the election. Get over it dipshit. When will morons such as yourself get it...It doesn't matter who's in charge....so many fucking idiots, and guess what pal....you're at the front of the line
so monday is going to be the big day?
8:23 PM No dude, you're at the front of the line. It's no problem though. Maggots like you never have the courage to talk your crap in public lest you wind up with lead in the head.
I don't know why anon823 has to respond with vicious ad hominem attacks. probably shows the bankruptcy of his world view that all he can do is call another person an "asshole." i am truly sorry for you, sir.
I don't appreciate the mean-spirited viewpoint of 807anon, and his interpretation of Monday's cuts in Tacoma are a little bit off base. Its not going to be a happy day by any stretch of the imagination, though.
That is the problem. Whether you appreciate it or not is irrelevant as this is not your paper where others are not entitled to an opinion.
Cutting the entire editorial board instead of real reporters would go a long way in effecting the cuts with fewer jobs lost and a giant step in repairing the destruction of public trust.
Of course you never mention the foul and vial response by 8:23. It tells us volumes about the content of your own character.
8:23 p.m.: I didn't vote for either Obama or McCain because I'm not a member of a political party. I actually thought members of an editorial staff were not supposed to take sides to the extent that you should not have a party registration sources could look up. Not at McClatchy, land of liberal ideologues.
Looks now like it's McClatchy that's getting the gasoline enema.
"Cutting the entire editorial board instead of real reporters would go a long way in effecting the cuts with fewer jobs lost and a giant step in repairing the destruction of public trust."
Sir or ma'am, I believe you have it in a nutshell.
(Some) reporters are out in the community talking to people and getting a sense of what people in their region think. Editorial board members go to lunch at Spataro's* and Waterboy* (I always loved it that our PC editors went to lunch at a place named for a servant) with each other and a select few other "enlightened geniuses."
A former McClatchy reporter
*Sacramento
Anon 9:35 Bingo, We have a winner!
March 7, 2009 8:07 PM
John Trumbo, is that you?
While I agree that reporters and photographers who create the most original content for a paper should be the last ones on the chopping block while the thinning should be done on the top-heavy, overpaid management-side of papers, I don't know how anyone intelligent enough to deserve to keep their newsroom job could come to the conclusion that McClatchy's troubles are Obama's fault -- he wasn't even in office when the troubles began -- or that there's some liberal agenda to blame. It seems to have a lot more to do with the company going into massive debt to buy the Miami Herald and other properties right before the housing market collapsed and the economy went south. Now they're stuck with a debt-load they can't afford because their advertisers have disappeared. Seems like corporate greed is the guilty party here.
Amazing how the "rats" continue to keep their jobs deciding the future of the employees that actually do the physical work.
Even with so many layoffs there are others leaving the Tri-City Herald in order to save their physical health. Management just closes their eyes and pretends that they are not the cause. Too much work for too few people. Nobody is happy working there except the inner circle.
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