Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Media Knoxville News-Sentinel Lays Off 33 Employees
Posted by Steve Haruch on Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 5:16 PM
Sad news today from Knoxville, where the daily News-Sentinel announced it has laid off 33 employees.
The KNS Media group, which includes the News Sentinel, today eliminated the positions of 33 employees, a reduction in force reflecting the economic challenges the newspaper industry has been facing.The layoffs represented about 7.5 percent of the organization's workforce and included four newsroom employees. In most cases, they were effective immediately.
"The decision to eliminate positions was not an easy one," said Patrick Birmingham, president and publisher of the News Sentinel. "We looked long and hard at many options and did everything we could to preserve as many jobs as possible.
"Unfortunately, right now there is an economic reality facing the newspaper business, and that reality forces us to make tough decisions at times like these."
On Dec. 6, the phrase "times like these" really rings out, doesn't it?
In a tweet, The Tennessean's Jennifer Brooks said, "Word is four gone in the newsroom," and linked to this post at KnoxViews, which posits that blogger Michael Silence was among those let go.
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Wonder if Greg Johnson was among the departed? That would be a net gain for the KNS.
Newspapers, as all knows, have been on a slide for several yrs now.
Ad sales dropping tremendously so things like Classified's are increased
in price by these papers causing those ads to slide even further.
The papers usually blame it on the economy which is only partially to
blame. Content or lack of worthwhile and relevant content is also a
large part of the problem. TV networks makes all content in a Reality
show format making their relevance even more problematic, so like
myself, a great many readers and viewers turn to other sources !
This is a combination of advances in electronic media, a decline in the quality of the newspapers themselves (the Knoxville paper was not as dismal as the Tennessean in this regard, but stillproblematic), and a decline in the literacy of he general population. We are ill-served by reductions in the number of media outlets, in the number of real professioanl journalists (as opposed to blogers and axe-grinders) and the quality of the different media.
