Cutbacks at The Tennessean
1100 Broad sees shrinking news hole, a hiring freeze and an end to TV listings in rack copies
by Liz Garrigan
After
weeks of rumors that layoffs were coming to 1100 Broadway, publisher
Ellen Leifeld led a series of grim newsroom meetings Tuesday
announcing that the company would be offering “voluntary
separation” packages to 15 staffers.
Many
more than 15 employees are expected to “apply” for the packages,
which will give employees two weeks of pay for every year of
service.
The
news comes amid a series of recent cost-cutting measures at the
paper, including implementing a hiring freeze, shrinking news hole
by what one source says is roughly six pages a month and removing TV
listings from rack-sale papers, which has led angry readers to dial
the Tennessean customer service number in droves.
As
recently as yesterday morning, staffers were both bemoaning and
defending the chronically low morale at the paper, saying that they
were at least relieved that no layoffs had been announced. “I’ve
never worked in a newsroom where morale is good,” one staffer
says. “I think people are kind of nervous across the industry, and
the Tennessean reflects that.”
But
then when 3 p.m. rolled around Tuesday, the mood darkened
significantly.
Across
the country, media headlines are equally or more disconcerting: the
San Jose newsroom has gone from 400 to 200 newsroom staffers in four
or five years, San Francisco is cutting 100 people from a 400-person
newsroom. By comparison, what’s happening at The Tennessean
is actually tame.
“What
we’ve done is stopped hiring and done some other cutbacks,” one
newsroom source says. “Trim a little news space here and there,
cut back a little bit on travel. The problem right now is, you know,
for all of the gains in online readership that newspapers are
seeing, the advertising dollars aren’t following the audience.
That’s an industry wide problem, and it affects every single
newspaper.
“If
you take most newspapers and you combine the unique visitors who
don’t read the news in print and you add that to the print
circulation, most newspapers are reaching more people than we were
in the past—even though print circulation is down. So just as an
industry, man, that is so frustrating. I don’t think anybody has
figured out a way to sell the concept to people.”
Comments (0)