Writing in The New York Times, Timothy Egan invokes the spirit of Thomas Jefferson in an impassioned plea for continuation of the status quo in the newspaper business. His argument is more eloquent than most, but it’s predicated on two shaky assumptions.

The first is that newspaper readership is higher today than ever. Egan calls this the “great paradox,” and it would be if the numbers existed in a vacuum. It’s true that newspapers’ total audience is growing, but the real question is relative to what? This blog gets a lot more readers online than it would if it were copied and distributed on street corners, but is that an inherent measure of value? The growth of the Web and the emergence of high-quality search engines are a tide that lifts all boats, but that doesn’t make the boats themselves any more valuable. You can turn around this logic: There are some 20 million active blogs today that didn’t exist five years ago. Facebook traffic drawfs that of all major newspapers combined. Does that make blogs and Facebook a more useful resource than The New York Times?

Fewer Jobs, But Not Fewer Journalists

The second assumption is that journalism jobs are going away and with them, professional journalism. Egan cites Huffington Post, a favorite mainstream media whipping post because it pays its contributors so little. “We could be left with a national snark brigade, sniping at the remaining dailies in their pajamas, never rubbing shoulders with a cop, a defense attorney or a distressed family in a Red Cross shelter after a flood,” he moans.

Well, he’s got one thing right: in the future there will be fewer salaried staff positions at big media institutions. But it’s stretch to say there will be fewer professional journalists.

Huffington Post lists 30 editors on its masthead. We can assume that some of those people are getting paid. While it’s true that staff jobs are declining, there is a model for the future of journalism careers. It’s called freelancing. Lots of professional journalists make a perfectly good living today writing for multiple clients. Some of those clients are businesses and others are media organizations. The corporate work generally pays better, and that supplements the more interesting “pure” journalism work. Many of the best journalists in the US long ago left their staff positions in order to go solo. Most freelancers I know prefer the flexibility and freedom that the lifestyle provides. And most magazines couldn’t survive without their services.

Lots of industries work this way. The accounting profession has a few mega-firms and thousands of individual practitioners. Doctors can choose to work for a medical group or hang out their own shingle. Many independent consultants provide specialized services that their clients can’t get from big organizations. These people make good livings without working a staff job. Freelancers create good journalism without working for media organizations.

A Cleansing Process

The Internet is in the process of cleaning inefficiency out of the media business. To demonstrate the waste of the current media model, search for coverage of any major news story on Google News. Chances are you’ll find more than 100 stories about the same topic, each reported by a different organization. Every day across the US, hundreds of reporters, editors, copy editors and layout artists duplicate each other’s efforts producing the same stories about the same topics. This duplication of effort was necessary when the only way to reach readers was on a printed page. It isn’t necessary any more.

Why are there over 100 journalists at every Presidential press conference, political convention, World Series game and Olympic event when five could report the facts equally well? Is it conceivable that a smaller number of national media organizations could do the work more efficiently by pooling resources for the big events and farming out the color stories and sidebars to a network of freelancers? Could journalists make a decent living selling these services? I think so.

The destruction of newspapers is creating pain and heartbreak for the people who are losing their jobs. Our heart goes out to them. But this process is part of a necessary cleansing process, one that will force many journalists to re-evaluate their strengths and seek new sources of income. This will ultimately bring efficiency to a market that is shedding a legacy of waste and duplicated effort. Read Chris Jennewein’s upbeat piece on SensibleTalk.com about why it’s a great time to be a journalist for inspiration.

An intern at the Tampa Tribune has posted excerpts from a remarkable speech by Editor in Chief Janet Coats to her newsroom the other day. The newspaper had just announced plans to cut its newsroom staff by about 10% or 21 people. Coats said some politically unpopular things. ““People need to stop looking at TBO.com as an add-on to the Tampa Tribune,” intern Jessica DaSilva quotes Coats as saying. “The truth is that The Tampa Tribune is an add-on to TBO.”

Coats went on to compare the newspaper industry to the music industry, which is in a death spiral of its own right now. Demand for music has never been higher, but the record industry is hemorrhaging because its business model is tied to a distribution system that is now irrelevant. Newspapers will enter a death spiral of their own if they don’t change their thinking, Coats said.

Janet Coats is one smart editor, and let’s hope her staff responds to her rallying cry: “It’s worth fighting for.” While they’re at it, find a full-time job for Jessica DaSilva, who turns in a nice piece of reporting here.

Latest Cutbacks May Not Go Far Enough

Alan Mutter has a fascinating analysis of newspaper industry layoffs. He counts up all the cuts announced this year, compares them to previous downturns and concludes that publishers are cutting back far too little. In previous slowdowns, Mutter demonstrates, publishers cut headcount roughly in line with ad declines. This time around, though, they’ve trimmed less aggressively. It could be that publishers’ decisions to cut expenses in 2005, when business was good, made them think they were ahead of the game, but they’re actually falling further and further behind as the ad business spirals downward.

This is depressing news, and it further supports the likelihood that a death spiral is beginning. Death spirals happen when revenues decline faster than expenses. Companies avoid tough decisions about cost cuts, figuring that things will get better and they want to retain their best people. When things don’t get better, they find themselves scrambling to shed workers as quickly as possible. They take a hatchet to their workforce, which scares employees and spooks investors. The best people leave and the remaining employees cower in a corner, getting little done and mostly speculating about the next round of cost cuts. This happens every time a big corporation goes off a cliff, and the same scenario is ominously forming in newspapers today.

In light of Mutter’s analysis, the Tribune Co.’s recent aggressive cost-cutting measures may be smart business. Yesterday’s 250-person layoff at the Los Angeles Times, for example, was more than 8% of the total workforce. Nevertheless, with revenues falling at a 14% clip in the first quarter, it still may not be enough. Which sucks.

• The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will cut 130 people, or about 10% of its workforce. Management is hoping to use buyouts and attrition, but will resort to layoffs to meet the number. The Journal Sentinel just won a Pulitzer.

Getting on the Hyper-local Train…Or Not

The Santa Cruz Sentinel is the latest paper to joint the reader-generated content trend. But instead of celebrating the addition of community-contributed articles to the new “Perspectives” section, an editorial presumably written by EIC Don Miller under the dour headline of “More changes at the Sentinel” makes it clear that this was not a popular decision. “I try to keep all these changes in … perspective. Because change is what is happening,” says the writer. “And for newspapers, in whatever form they will be published and delivered, to survive, change is what we have to do.” Wow, that oughta rally the community! (via Editors Weblog)

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Steve Outing vamps on an earlier opinion he wrote with the controversial position that local news can be boring. Outing, who is an unabashed supporter of the “hyper-local” concept, uses his hometown newspaper as an example. The section devoted to reader-contributed items is full of uninteresting, poorly written and marginally relevant content. “I’m a believer in hyper-local! I just don’t think we’re doing it right yet,” he writes. Good point. Hyper-local doesn’t mean publishing every 4-H Club meeting announcement and blog entry citizens that citizens contribute. It’s about constructing a new kind of news service that targets specific interests. The prolific Outing offers some of his own ideas.

Miscellany

A columnist for the Rocky Mountain News proposes a novel idea: shut down his newspaper. Or maybe close the Denver Post. Either/or. The current business model isn’t working, says David Milstead. Denver has a been a joint operating agreement town for eight years, but the uneasy alliance between owners E.W. Scripps and Media General hasn’t led to sustained profitability for either of Denver’s two papers. Perhaps the best course of action is to shutter the weaker paper and the weaker website. Milstead suggests that this could result in the News continuing in print while the Post serves Denver online.

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If you want to see heartening examples of the innovative things newspapers are doing, subscribe to Editor & Publisher’s Best of the Web feed.

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McClatchy Vice President of News, Howard Weaver, has set up a wiki to seek ideas from staff members and really anyone who wants to weigh in. It’s lightly trafficked so far, but it’s still early. Advice to Weaver: the vast majority of wikis go nowhere. There seem to be two elements of success: 1) People have no other other way (like e-mail) to express their opinions; and 2) One or more people are actively tending the fires, responding to comments and posting new material. Just because you build it doesn’t mean they’ll come.

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The Review-Atlas of Galesburg-Monmouth, IL will drop its Monday edition, following the lead of several small papers that have scaled back frequency in the same of cost savings. Monday is the smallest issue of the week for most newspapers and frequently loses money.

And Finally…

If the industry’s troubles have got you in a bad mood and you want to blog off some steam, change the routine a bit. Find an insult that’s  more offensive that the usual F-bomb and use language that won’t make a bad impression on the 4-year-old is in the back seat. Brush up on your scurrilous vernacular with the Shakespeare insult kit. Take it from the Bard himself and don’t be a qualling hedge-born moldwarp.

 

The Los Angeles Times will lay off 250 people, including 150 in the newsroom, in the latest round of Tribune Co. cutbacks. The layoffs have been rumored ever since Tribune Co. COO Randy Michaels singled out the paper as a trough of journalistic productivity in Tribune Co.’s portfolio. Tribune has since announced steep cuts in Hartford and Baltimore.

In contrast to layoffs at other newspapers around the country, Tribune Co. has focused the knife on editorial departments. The cuts in Hartford and Baltimore each amounted to 20% or more of the newsroom. Michaels and CEO Sam Zell have openly stated that journalist productivity, as measured in column inches,  will be one of the metrics they use to identify layoff targets. The LA Times is slashing its news staff by 150 people, or about 17%. The surviving staff of 725 is nearly 40% smaller than  it was during the boom days just before 9/11, when it employed 1,200.

In a memo to employees, Times editor Russ Stanton also outlined other planned changes, including a redesign of the newspaper and merging of the print and online news staffs. Stanton’s memo indicates that Times management is solidly lined up behind the transformation of the brand from a print to multiple media. Ed Padgett has the full text of Stanton’s memo.

Padgett also reprints an unusually upbeat and conciliatory memo from Sam Zell, whose public mood had raged from dazed to cynical recently. While this probably isn’t the last of the Tribune cuts, it may be the most painful. the LA Times has the largest newsroom and the broadest reach of any Tribune title and the industry has been waiting for the ax to fall.

One frequent criticism I hear from readers is that the Death Watch is too negative. While the title of this blog betrays a certain tongue-in-cheek pessimism, my intent is also to highlight the many new and innovative approaches to journalism that are emerging in an information-empowered world. Today I’ll begin a series of periodic essays about how changes in the media landscape are reshaping journalism into a much richer, more responsible and more credible profession.

We are in a chaotic period of redefinition right now, and that breeds fear and cynicism. I am fundamentally optimistic about the future, though. I believe that the wreckage of the newspaper industry will yield a more open and enlightened era of journalism that will be shaped by the institutions that embrace the changes we are now experiencing. It’s going to be rocky getting there, but we will figure it out as we go along.

Many other people are writing about this topic, and I list some of them in the media blogs category. In particular, check out the Center for Citizen Media, Jeff Jarvis, Publishing 2.0, Shaping the Future of the Newspaper,  Steve Boriss, Mark Potts, Steve Outing and Editors Weblog. Please suggest others.

Discard Assumptions

So what does the journalism profession become when information is free and everyone is a publisher?

Start by discarding assumptions. This is hard for people to do, and it’s one of the main reasons so many journalists are struggling with change. Many of the practices and conventions of journalism today were actually invented to cope with an age when timely information was difficult and expensive to gather and deliver. Basically, we do what we do in large part because we’ve had to deal with plates and presses and trucks and news stands, all of which added time and cost. We don’t have to worry about that stuff any more. This should cause us to completely rethink our approach to the craft.

Here are the new realities:

• Today, everyone is potentially a journalist, even if only for a few minutes;

• Technology has made it possible for news to be reported in near real-time. People will come to expect this;

• The cost of reporting and publishing news is now effectively zero;

• Publishing is now a beginning, not an end. Once a “story” goes online, an update and refinement begins that may last for years or decades;

• Any person or institution with an interest in a story has the capacity to publish facts, commentary and updates without seeking anyone’s permission. Responsible journalists need to incorporate that information into their work as appropriate.

All of these realities reverse rules that have existed for thousands of years. This is why we need to rethink everything. Nearly everything has changed.

But some things haven’t. People still want trusted sources of information. They want clear distinctions between fact and conjecture. Institutions need to be monitored. We need to know whom to trust. These needs won’t change if newspapers go away, so someone will need to fill the void.

Traditional Reporting is Obsolete

How does journalism need to evolve? Let’s start with the role of the reporter, because that function is likely to change the most. The traditional function of reporter doesn’t make sense any more. Every day, hundreds of thousands of people in cities around the world put their faith in the hands of a small number of people to gather and deliver the news. For the most part, these people aren’t experts in their topics they cover. In fact, reporters get shifted to new beats all the time. Reporters are resourceful, however. Most of them are pretty good at learning on the fly, figuring out what’s important and presenting that information clearly and succinctly. These are important skills and they’ll be needed for a long time to come.

There’s an awful lot of waste in reporting, though. Most of what a reporter learns in the process of working a story is discarded. Even more waste occurs when a story is cut for space. In the end, a task that requires hours of information-gathering may be boiled down to a couple of hundred words on a page. This was necessary in a time- and space-limited world, but it isn’t necessary any more.

The traditional limitations of print and broadcast media have required reporters to make scores or even hundreds of value judgments during the reporting process. An hour-long interview may result in a single sentence of published information or a three-second sound bite. In essence, one trained person makes decisions affecting what hundreds of thousands of people may know. Reporters do a pretty good job of upholding the trust that readers put in them, but the rules are all different now. No one should be denied access to information just because there wasn’t enough space.

New Journalism is Transparent

Today, nearly every relevant fact about a story may be captured and shared with anyone who’s interested. This service may be provided by the reporter, participants, observers and commentators. This information doesn’t have to be part of the story that the reporter submits for publication, but it should be available to those who want to know. The reporter’s role expands to include not only making judgments about what information to include but also about were to link for more information. The “story” becomes an entry point to an archive of relevant content that may be of interest to different people. The ability to make these associations becomes a core journalism skill. The choice of where to link and what background to provide becomes part of editorial voice.

This new reality should be liberating for readers and journalists alike. No longer do journalists have to make difficult choices about what readers may know. No longer do readers have to regard media institutions with suspicion. Everyone is free to contribute, correct and weigh in on the story. Whatever the media entity chooses not to cite in its published account can be discovered through search. Journalists will be more accountable and readers will be more confident that they can trust the information they receive.

A lot of media veterans are uncomfortable with this idea, though. Their profession has long been shrouded in mystery. Editors are accountable only to a small group of higher-ups who share the same priorities as they do. A self-policing strategy rarely works. Very few readers understand what goes on in a newsroom, and this makes them suspicious. One of the reasons so few people trust the media is that so few people understand how the media works.

Bonds of Trust

We’re going to start opening that up. When readers and viewers have access to the source material for a reporter’s story, they feel more confident that  the account is accurate, even if they never consult that background. Ironically, I believe we will see less accuracy in reporting in the future, but that’s a topic for a future essay. The basic point is that the reporters will increasingly become aggregators and topic stewards. They will be obliged to present a variety of inputs and opinions because those opinion-makers will publish whether the reporter wants them to or not.

Reporters will also come to write not only the first draft of history, but subsequent drafts as well. A story will evolve the same way that an entry in Wikipedia begins as a one-sentence stub and evolves into a comprehensive account representing multiple sources and points of view. In a few cases, the public will participate in this process. Mostly, they will observe, but they will have confidence that the process by which the truth is reported is transparent and accessible if they so wish.

Next we’ll look at the role of editors

Veteran journalist Ken Reich, a 39-year employee of the Los Angeles Times, died in his sleep last night. He posted his final entry on Take Back the Times just hours before he died. Reich retired from the Times four years ago and almost immediately began blogging. His blog was notable for its fine writing, its insight into the inner workings of the paper and its withering criticism of Tribune Co. management. Reich was a friend to executives and pressmen alike and his voice of loyal opposition will be missed.

His daughter, Kathy, is asking visitors to Take Back the Times to share their memories and condolences.

(photo by FullDisclosure.net)

Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell was interviewed on CNBC’s Squawk Box show last Friday morning and took the opportunity to reinforce his position as a change agent. “Because newspapers have historically been monopolies, I think they’ve been insulated from reality,” he said. Actually, newspapers have historically been competitive, but no so much for the last 30 years or so. Zell also made it clear that business sucks far more than he expected. “Are you talking about the people who buy ads? I’m trying to find one of them,” he says in only partial jest. Romenesko has a transcript.

The Washington Post quotes bond analysts saying Tribune Co. will be able to meet its debt obligations through mid-2009, but that’s when things might get ugly. A big bond payment is due at about that time and no asset in the portfolio is going to raise enough money to make that nut. The story also has a rundown of recent cost-cutting efforts at Tribune Co., all of which have been documented here.

Add Tell Zell to your RSS reader because this blog is not only snarky but fun. It’s got a new tool called the Hackinator that enables users to compose letters of resignation to various Tribune Co. managers using an assortment of menu-driven insults. Tell Zell is also publicizing an Orlando Sentinel staffer’s call for a company-wide sickout by Tribune Co. employees on July 9. As of Monday morning, sentiment was running 70% in favor. But will they actually follow through?

Miscellany

From across the pond, the Guardian sums up the wretched state of the US newspaper industry. While there’s no news here you haven’t read in NDW before, the quotes from screenwriter David Simon are interesting. He compares newspapers to the Napster-era music industry and says what’s needed is an iTunes for newspapers. The piece also hints at a theory we floated last week: Rupert Murdoch may be the big winner in all this.

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Mark Potts was busy on Friday, posting a 10-point manifesto for fixing major metro dailies. While not everything in the blog entry is new (we know it’s all about going local), advice like “zero-base the news operation” and “lose the editorial page” are compelling. The latter idea really stuck with us. The editorial page is a vestige of bygone days when institutional voices ruled the land. Today, it’s all about community, yet all major metro dailies march on with this outdated and increasingly irrelevant daily opinion. Potts closes with the sad observation that the greatest innovation in newspapers of the last decade has been Sudoku. For which we are profoundly grateful.

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A day earlier, Potts rounded up the week’s carnage and figured about 900 jobs were eliminated during the week on top of the 1,400 cut by McClatchy the week before. He quotes Simon Dumenco writing in Advertising Age that reading Romenesko these days is like “reading the obits.”

Layoff Log

The Bay Area News Group, which operates eight regional papers in the San Francisco area, will lay off 13% of its workforce. The actual number wasn’t announced. The company will also lay off 29 out of 226 employees in a newsroom that voted for unionize early this month. A 17% decline in first-half business was cited. One of its member papers, the Palo Alto Daily News, will also eliminate its Monday edition.

The Albany Newspaper Guild says 14 people took buyouts, but it doesn’t say where. We’re not aware of any cost-cutting going on at the Times-Union, which actually recently announced expanion plans. Let us know if you can shed light on this announcement.

And Finally…

In Romania, they apparently like things simple. So the Romanian Senate just passed a law requiring the media to provide a 50-50 balance of positive and negative news. Fortunately, the government council designated to arbitrate the rule quickly denounced the law as ludicrous.

Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell must be relieved to be back on familiar territory in the real estate business. He’s just put the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower up for sale as well as Los Angeles Times property in historic Times Mirror Square. Technically, Zell says he’s only seeking ways to maximize the value of the properties, but it’s hard to imagine that his options would include making the investment required to redevelop the buildings for the long term. He’s putting them up for sale and potentially buying another year of life for his highly leveraged company. The Wall Street Journal quotes sources estimating the two properties could fetch $385 million.

So the man who said he was going to shake up the Tribune by challenging conventional thinking and breaking the mold is now going back to what he knows best: selling real estate. That kind of vision has got to inspire the troops, especially in the wake of major layoffs at two Tribune papers this week. Edward Padgett has Zell’s memo to employees urging them to keep their eye on the ball and not speculate about what’s up with the property sales.

Assume that more layoffs are on the way shortly. Edward Padgett has the text of a memo from Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller to his staff setting the stage for major cost cuts. We can assume there won’t be a lot of joy around the barbeque at LAT employee picnics this weekend.

The Atlantic has a Q&A with Tribune Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams in which he doesn’t come off sounding nearly as goofy as his memos make him out to be. Still, his comments are short on the kind of breakthrough insight that the Tribune probably needs right now.

In Other Layoff News…

• Gannett Co. is looking to cut 150 employees from the Detroit Free Press and the rival Detroit News. That’s about 7.5% of the total workforce, according to Gannett Blog. Management is hoping to make the cuts through buyouts rather than layoffs, but hasn’t ruled out the latter. Detroit is a joint operating agreement town, meaning that the two competing papers belong to the same corporate parent. That’s how bad the advertising climate is. (via Fading to Black)
• We noted yesterday that when the new round of layoffs at the Hartford Courant are complete, the news staff will have been reduced from 400 to 175, or 55%. That’s not the worst of it, though. Alan Mutter calculates following a small layoff just announced at the San Jose Mercury News, its staff will have been cut 63%. Commenters say that estimate might actually be on the low side.

The Future Takes Shape

Veteran journalists might scoff at the joint effort by MySpace and NBC to recruit citizen journalists to cover the upcoming political conventions, but we think it’s an innovative idea. Someone with a lot of talent but without a lot of connections is going to have the chance to gain a national audience for a few days this summer based solely on his or her creativity and hard work. And what the heck is wrong with that?

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Add the San Diego Union-Tribune to the growing list of newspapers that are republishing the best content submitted by users in print. The paper has launched a social network for residents of San Diego county. It’s got all the usual Facebook-like stuff, but editors will be monitoring the discussions and publishing good material in the company’s community weeklies.

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for information and some of the promise and challenge that presents. The NPR example is great.
Speaking of citizen journalism, the Guardian has been reporting on a conference about the future of journalism. Caitlin Fitzsimmons blogs a panel about how news organizations are tapping into crowds

Miscellany

Online Journalism blog has the first in a series of planned stories about semantic journalism. Nicolas Kayser-Bril kicks things off with a plain-English explanation of the semantic Web. Basically, if machines could do a better job of interpreting information, it would make all our lives a lot easier. And the Death Watch editor could catch another hour or two of sleep.

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We have intentionally avoided commenting on the pissing match between the Associated Press and a group of self-righteous bloggers over fair use of AP copy. We tend to side with the bloggers, but we think the AP also has a point. If you’re late to the party or haven’t been following it closely, Editors Weblog has done the legwork for you. This timeline of the dispute is full of links to relevant detail and covers the big issues succinctly.

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Alan Mutter has created the Default-O-Matic, a tool that rates the likelihood that various large newspaper companies will default on their debt. Journal Register Co., whose stock is almost literally not worth the paper it’s printed on, leads the funeral procession, while Washington Post Co. is the healthiest overall. Read this post if you want a quick tutorial on what “default” means. It’s more involved than we thought.

And Finally

LA Times Pressman Edward Padgett shares this gem: “A recent study conducted by Harvard University found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study by the American Medical Association found that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol per year. This means, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon!” Have a nice weekend everyone.

The Baltimore Sun Media Group announced this morning that it will lay off 100 people out of its 1,400-person staff, with a disproportionate percentage of the cuts coming from the newsroom. The unit, which owns the Baltimore Sun and several community newspapers, told the Newspaper Guild that 55 to 60 jobs would be cut on the Sun’s editorial staff, or about 20% of total newsroom employment. The paper will offer buyouts through July 18 and then use layoffs to meet its total job reduction goal.

The Hartfort Courant will cut 57 newsroom jobs, or nearly a quarter of its total editorial staff, along with a corresponding reduction in news pages. At its peak in 1994, the Courant employed 400 journalists. With the most recent cuts, that number falls to 175.

The focus on the editorial department is interesting in light of recent criticism by Tribune Co. executives of journalist productivity. CEO Sam Zell and COO Randy Michaels made it clear in a call with investors early this month that writers and editors would increasingly be measured by the quantity of their output. They said that most papers in the Tribune portfolio would lose pages and staff in the coming months and outlined plans for a series of redesigns that kicked off with a new look for the Orlando Sentinel this week.

Tribune Co. stands alone in its focus on cutting editorial staff. Most publishers have tried to limit newsroom layoffs out of concern about harming the quality of the product. Tribune Co. executives appear to have no such reservations. Zell and Co. are making a big bet that cuts in quality won’t significantly damage circulation, which is the key to advertising revenue. In a quote on Courant.com, Journalism Professor Rich Hanley of Quinnipiac University said of the shrinking Courant, “People could look at it and say, ‘This is nothing but a shopper on steroids.”

Here’s the memo from Sun Publisher Tim Ryan to employees:

The two key factors that will sustain our company for the future are customer satisfaction and financial stability. Achieving both goals is challenging in the very best of market conditions. In the face of today’s tough economy, adapting to consumer trends while maintaining our fiscal strength is proving to be even more difficult – yet even more critical.

Our long-term strategy of going on offense and creating growth opportunities will continue to get us closer to our goals. Already this year, we generated incremental Sun circulation gains, launched a new, free daily publication, b, which is the first of its kind in the market and, through our “explore” websites, delivered highly-localized news and information for the region’s consumers.

In spite of these early, significant wins, we struggled to achieve our performance goals. So, while we will stay on the offense, we are altering our game plan. In order to align ourselves more closely with our customers, we are retooling our business model, which will include enhancements to our newspaper. In August, 2008, The Sun redesign will debut, giving readers more of what they want – a more concise newspaper with more local news, personally relevant and useful content, consumer information, watchdog coverage, more graphics and better navigation.

By adjusting our business model and redesigning our core publication, we expect to stimulate readership growth and improve our financial performance. Regrettably, our new course also requires us to reduce our workforce by about 100 positions across BSMG. These actions are necessary for us to remain competitive and win in the future, and will enable us to create new targeted print and interactive media for the marketplace that satisfy both consumers and advertisers.

Transition Timeframe

The workforce reduction will include a combination of closing open positions, attrition, and voluntary and involuntary separation plans according to this timeline:

• Friday, June 27 – Voluntary separation packets will be available to all employees (availability to Guild-represented employees is being negotiated with the Guild). Volunteers will have two weeks, through Friday, July 11, to apply.
• Friday, July 11 – Thursday, July 17 – Volunteers will be notified whether their applications were accepted or not; decisions on involuntary separations will be made based upon voluntary results.
•  Friday, July 18– Employees who are part of the involuntary separation plan will be notified. Voluntary and involuntary separations will occur in early August.

Human Resources, your leadership and plan documentation will provide further detail of plan terms, including compensation, savings/retirement funds and medical benefits. While Tribune does not have a formal severance policy, the formula that the company is using to determine benefits payable to employees affected by the current workforce reductions is more generous than any formula that the company may use after 2008.

Moving Forward

It is extremely difficult for all of us to lose colleagues and friends. However, while we cannot control the current economy, we can control what action we take to create a stronger future. We are, by far, Baltimore’s media leader, and through ongoing innovation to introduce new and exciting media for our marketplace, we will maintain our competitive position.

The leadership team and I will continue to keep you informed throughout this transition. Thank you for your patience, continuing contributions and commitment to our company

Tim

Here’s the redesigned home page of the Orlando Sentinel. This will apparently serve as a model for redesigns of several other Tribune Co. properties. What do you think? Ping us in the comments area below.

Tribune Co.’s Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams has already weighed in and HE LOVES IT! The Wall Street Journal explains the background of the ambitious company-wide effort and says the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Baltimore Sun are next on the redesign list, followed by the Chicago Tribune. Whether a visual makeover can repair the problems all these papers are suffering in their core markets is a matter of speculation, but there’s no doubt Zell & Co. are trying some new tactics.

A Modest Proposal for Miami

Could Miami become a one-newspaper town? Alan Mutter thinks so, and he puts forth a persuasive argument for restructuring the Herald and the Sun-Sentinel under a joint operating agreement (JOA). JOAs were a 1970s gift from the government to the newspaper industry that enabled competing newspapers to consolidate operations and do business as a legal duopoly. For the last 30 years, it’s been a license to print money. Today, it may be a lifeline to publishers whose only alternative is closure. Unfortunately, JOAs have also historically been a license for publishers to become fat and complacent as competition is removed from the landscape. They’re one of the reasons the industry is in so much trouble today.

Editors Debate Newspaper Survival

A group of Chicago journalists got together last week to discuss the topic of “Will Newspapers Survive?” The panelists were all working reporters and editors who are realistic about the future and their attitudes were strikingly sanguine, as reported by Chicago Reader. Tom McNamee, editorial page editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, offered the most dispassionate perspective: “We may not all be making fortunes. Our 30 percent profit days are over. We may not survive. But you know what — that’s our problem. Not to say that the world’s in crisis because newspapers may not survive in the form that we recognize now.” Other panelists blamed the business side for not innovating quickly enough. The editors are psyched to change, they said, but the sales and management suits are too stuck on their historic profit margins. (via Editors Weblog )

Miscellany

• Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downier, who led the newsroom to 25 Pulitzer Prizes, will step down after 17 years in the position and 44 years with the newspaper. Downie, 66, said new blood is needed to accommodate rapid changes in the business. “So much further change now needs to take place at the newspaper and Web site, and someone else should be tackling that,” he said. He is a true class act.
• The Georgetown (Kentucky) News-Graphic will switch from afternoon to morning delivery, saying that the cost benefits are compelling in this day of stratospheric gas prices. Publisher Mike Scogin notes “In the outer parts of the county…carriers sometimes travel several miles to deliver just a couple of newspapers.” (via Fade to Black )
• As the Daytona Beach News-Journal waits to be sold, its publisher talks straight to the staff. Gone are 99 positions and a whole slew of tasks are being transferred to other departments or outsourced entirely. Bureaus will close, stock tables will be cut and business sections will be consolidated. It all adds up to one big morale hemorrhage, but the News-Journal publisher’s message is realistic: “Despite the unavoidable disruptions and distractions this week, we still have jobs to do, and it is in everybody’s best interest that we do them professionally and well.”
• If your newspaper is considering a 10% staff cut, be glad you aren’t in Taiwan. The China Times will lay off almost half its staff due to the weak economy.
• It seems like you could spend all day just reading gossip and analysis blog (like this one) about the newspaper industry. Danny Sanchez has gone and assembled a pretty fine directory of them.

And Finally…

The editors of the Washington Post have recently been quoted as saying that the paper could do with fewer copy editors. The Post’s Gene Weingarten has some fun with that idea. Thanks for reminding us that the wizards of grammar and spelling do play a vital role. (via Mark Hamilton)

Could Rupert Murdoch save the US newspaper industry? He may have his chance sooner than anyone imagined because things are worse than anyone predicted

The New York Times sums up the industry’s recent gruesome financial news and speculates that continued losses are “raising serious questions about the survival of some papers and the solvency of their parent companies.” Richard Perez-Pena’s piece says that 14% revenue declines in May against already weak 2007 numbers were worse than anyone expected and no one knows where the bottom is. While analysts agree that the bleeding has to stop sometime, they have no idea how bad things will get before that time arrives. With debt defaults looming, the most likely scenario is that weak players will consolidate with stronger ones.

If consolidation is the trend, then who will be the consolidators? Looking at the current sorry lineup of candidates, News Corp. looks like the only logical winner. If Rupert Murdoch plays his cards right, he could end up sitting on top of a much bigger empire than anyone envisioned when he made his daring bid for The Wall Street Journal less than a year ago.

Murdoch and his COO, Peter Chernin, were at the Cannes International Advertising Festival last week and were asked about the industry downturn. “We are going to plough right ahead and hopefully increase our share of the market wherever we can,” Murdoch said. Chernin added that it was “time to take market share if weaker competitors go away.”

That time may be soon. There is widespread anticipation that either Tribune Co., McClatchy and/or Philadelphia Media Holdings will default on loan covenants this year, which would immediately put them in play. Journal Register and Sun-Times Media Group are on life support. These companies collectively represent scores of US newspapers that could conceivably be bought for pennies on the dollar within the next year.

And who better to buy them that News Corp.? The company has a diversified media business with strength in its Fox television holdings and MySpace social network. Murdoch is confounding his critics by messing with the inviolate Wall Street Journal editorial model and actually gaining market share against The New York Times, which must be freaking out right now. Sure, Murodch walked away from the bidding for Newsday, but perhaps he’s simply waiting for a much bigger opportunity: the chance to own a publishing empire that includes Chicago, Los Angeles and much of the southeastern US. With Tribune and McClatchy, he’d have that. For a few dollars more, he could add Journal Register’s extensive midwesern holdings and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

With that kind of throw weight, Murdoch could do some interesting things to leverage economies of scale. And those properties could do a lot worse than to have Rupert as the boss. When you consider the alternative scenarios of bankers or professional investors taking over businesses they know nothing about, then the prospect of ownership by a savvy and successful media tycoon looks pretty palatable. As controversial as Murdoch’s tactics sometimes are, the man has a remarkable track record and a vision for the future of media. He is also one of the few publishers in the world who is investing in newspapers right now. Over the next 12 months, Murdoch could have an unprecedented opportunity to turn his vision into action on a much larger scale.

What do you think? Please weigh in with your comments.