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At most recent count, I think I saw something like 1,300 jobs cut by Gannett over the course of the last week. Some folks are reporting that it’s still going on.
Everything I’ve seen has said that The Cincinnati Enquirer lost 101 jobs last week in this round of cuts (are there more to come?). In doing the math, it looks like 101 jobs out of 1300 nationwide is a certifiable fuckton.
So, as a somewhat casual observer, here’s a question that I’m not sure anyone can answer, either because it’s difficult to answer or because they’re just not allowed: Why did the Cincinnati Enquirer get hit so hard? Speculation is welcome.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlostracco/ / CC BY 2.0 Front page thumbnail credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laffy4k/ / CC BY 2.0
Related posts:
- Gannett Moves Asheville & Greenville Production to Louisville: What, if Anything, Does This Mean for Cincinnati?
- Doesn’t Cincinnati City Council Have Better Things to Do?
- Rock, Internet, Scissors: Saying Goodbye To Peter Bronson
- Dear Enquirer: This is the Kind of Thing You’re Supposed to Work On Overnight. On a Tuesday.
- How is The Enquirer Framing The Layoffs? UPDATED
From what I gathered, it’s because Gannet Co. doesn’t care which of their papers are doing well and which ones aren’t – they want to cut to the bone and the Enquirer wasn’t quite there yet. Bet they are now, though.
Sarcastic as it is, Marty, that’s just too simplistic an answer. To be sure, it has to do with profitability instead of the quality of Gannett’s individual papers. But I’m not so sure that the Enquirer is, or has been, that far off of what other dailies nationwide have been, either in terms of money or quality content. Can anyone actually in the industry speak to that with a little more detail?
In the past few months there have been several rounds of Gannett-wide layoffs. I may be wrong on this, but I don’t think the Enquirer got hit as hard as other papers did during those rounds, especially the big one that came last fall. This just may be Gannett’s way of “catching-up” the Enquirer to the rest of Gannett.
My father-in-law works for The Greenville News in Greenville, SC. Also Gannett owned. He is a District Manager that over-sees about 35 – 40 business/residential carriers. So far he has taken 4 unpaid 7 day furlows this year. He says it’s everything he has to keep from being cut. I know that paper is on a downward spiral with no end in sight. I’m not certain how many people have lost their job, but he talked about it on a pretty regular basis.
Basically, when everyone is starting to get their news from the internet and not from hard copies the sales decline and so do the need for workers.
That’s the thing, though–many of the blogs you/I/we get your/our news from get their news, the bits they comment on, and so on from those mainstream sources that are now crumbling. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of blogs out there that employ traditional journalistic techniques and so on, but there aren’t that many. If we’re (and by “we,” I mean blogs in general) going to become the new landscape for news, then we have to get on the stick and take the torch the right way–and we better know what to do with it.
That is the general fear about the blogosphere becoming the go-to spot for “news.” Though sometimes poorly execcuted, journalists are bound by a code of professional ethics. Additionally, they are part of a larger force carrying a reputation that many are trying to protect.
Blogs, as a group, have no central ethos, and no governing body. There are no agreed-upon codes of ethics, let alone anyone out there to enforce them.
Losing traditional journalism is bad for democracy. Blogging is most certainly an extension of journalism, not a replacement for it. And it is a necessary one, in my humble opinion. Bloggers, however, are most often employed full-time at another job, and their spot on the interweb is a passion, a hobby, or even just an outlet.
Jack Shafer of Slate wrote an interesting column a few weeks ago about the changing journalism business, and it’s not the usual doom-and-gloom column we’ve come to expect reading about newspapers.
http://slate.com/id/2221856/
Thanks for hipping me to this article. Slate’s not usually on my radar, even though I know it probably should be.
[...] predictable captain with no ideas in place to slow the sure pace of the capsize. HarleyMunch reports that Gannett, who owns the Cincinnati Enquirer, cut 1300 jobs last week, the conservative [...]