This follows on yesterday's story that a young lady at Reuters had to write:
Thomson Reuters to cut 2,000 jobs; profit tops estimates
From Politico, who seem to be developing a specialty in the business of news:
The Wall Street Journal will debut an overhauled and
slimmed-down version of its print product on Nov. 14 in an effort to
make the paper more financially viable "for the foreseeable future,"
Journal editor Gerard Baker announced in an internal memo to staff
Wednesday.
The changes, which mostly consist of consolidations and
combinations of sections, will come with staff cuts, Baker warned. One
section to be hit hard is the newspaper's Greater New York coverage,
which will be consolidated to a "more concise, focused daily report on
life and business," Baker said.
"All newspapers face structural challenges and we must move
to create a print edition that can stand on a sound financial footing
for the foreseeable future while our digital horizons continue to
expand," Baker wrote in the memo. "As I previously mentioned, there will
unfortunately need to be an elimination of some positions as part of
this process."
To give a sense of what the section consolidations could
mean in terms of staff reductions, consider that Greater New York
currently has a team of roughly three dozen, including reporters,
editors and production people. The staff was informed in a meeting
Wednesday afternoon that since Greater New York will be moving to two
pages in the main section of the paper, the number of positions will be
trimmed to 16, including 12 reporters, and that everyone will have to
reapply to secure one of those jobs.
The announcement comes less than two weeks after the Journal
offered all of its 1,500 employees voluntary buyouts to reduce the
number of layoffs that Baker said would be inevitable. The move also
comes amid anxiety and uncertainty stemming from the publication's financial woes and the way the Journal is handling the changing newspaper industry.
Other sections will also be consolidated. The Journal's
Business & Tech and Money & Investing sections will be combined
into a new Business & Finance section; similarly, the Journal's
Personal Journal and Arena sections will be combined into a section
called Life & Arts....MORE
