Friday, April 3, 2009

DC bureau pink slips just 2 employees

While other McClatchy properties have laid 10% or more of their employees, McClatchy's DC bureau will lay off just 2 employees.

Just 2??? Even tiny Centre Daily Times in Pennsylvania sacrificed 3. And at the little Tri-City Herald in Washington, 3 employees were laid off. The hit was massive at the Kansas City Star (150 employees laid off) and the Miami Herald (175 employees laid off.) But the DC bureau gets the kid glove treatment.

Most of my readers said in a poll that the DC bureau should pay its fair share as the company made deep cuts across the chain. Click here to see the poll results.

McClatchy employees themselves anticipated big cuts at the DC bureau. McClatchy employee Jack Chang, who covers Latin American issues out of the DC bureau, published on his blog he was hearing as many as one fourth of the DC bureau would be pink-slipped. He later deleted his blog post about layoffs at the DC bureau, but it has been cached; you can read it here.

Keeping most DC bureau employees doesn't make sense given other MNI moves, such as combining overseas coverage with the Christian Science Monitor, and contracting with Politico for political news. I imagine once those announced changes are operation, redundant DC bureau jobs will be eliminated.

Photo of DC bureau cubicles by Daniel Rosenbaum, The New York Times.

Hat tip: Pg1News
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

And only one person anywhere said you're sniffing paint if you believe they are going to cut the DC Bureau. It was Anonymous@McClatchy Watch. hahahahha suckers. Where do you think we launder our foreign income at, Miami?

Anonymous said...

Suits me. I didn't want to lose our DC reporter.

Anonymous said...

If it takes MNI going completely out of business to rid us of their DC and foreign bureaus, then sobeit. They are too far gone, and not worth saving. Hamas is the only one that will miss them.

Anonymous said...

Anybody know who was cut? Or rather what beats have been cut out? (I know we don't like to name names, and I respect that. I just want to know if these are DC beat people, or foreign correspondents in which bureaus, etc.)