Whispers from 1st Ave S
August 23, 2007 at 1:04 pm by Wayne GarciaThe clock is ticking on the St. Petersburg Times‘ goal “to eliminate 80 to 90 jobs companywide by the end of 2007, mostly through attrition,” as Forbes reported last year.
The Citrus County section was killed and offices in Inverness and Crystal River were closed in April. And whispers of more changes are coming fast and furious.
The Largo zoned edition of the paper could be going away, one source says. And this week, five advertising reps were off-loaded. The paper hasn’t announced layoffs, per se, but appears to have taken to letting go some employees who, in happier economic times, probably would not have been targeted for dismissal (the recent firing of Tampa bureau writer Rick Gershman, for example, after a DUI arrest).
Of course, this is nothing compared with the free-fall that is the Tampa Tribune. Many employees there expect another round of layoffs later this year.
August 25th, 2007 at 12:22 am
Although it is sad when anyone is laid off, there is some irony in the fact that both papers have supported runaway city and county spending over the past three years, while not pointing out waste and inefficiencies, Now the owners of the papers have decided that when their own money is on the line waste and inefficient operations, and jobs for the sake of jobs are not such a good idea.
As a side note if the papers truly wanted to increase their revenue it would not kill either of them to stop being cheerleaders and start asking probing questions of local officials otherwise who need local papers.