The Political Whore

After the jump I’ve got latest internal memo from Trib news chief Janet Coats on the reorganization of the daily’s newsroom in a combined newgathering operation with the broadcast folks at Newschannel 8 and the digital workers at tbo.com.

Lots of talk about platforms and finishing and such, but the hottest news for you info consumers isn’t in here: On Monday, multiple sources have told me, the Tribune will launch its reconfigured daily newspaper into one section of news/sports/whatever and a second section of classifieds/comics. The first tip about the changes to come in the daily print product came in Jeff Houck’s Food section column this morning:

SO LONG, FAREWELL, SEE YOU SUNDAY

One of my favorite ads on TV right now is the Dunkin’ Donuts commercial that starts with one of the characters singing the line, “You neglected to mention the sleeper sofa,” before breaking into an Egyptian slavelike moan. “I forgot all about the air hockey table,” the second character replies. More painful moaning, followed by images of possessions tumbling down an apartment staircase. The first character then finishes by singing, “Re-LUC-tant-LY hel-PING my friend MOVE!”

What does all this have to do with The Stew? Well, like George, Weezie and Lionel Jefferson, it’s time for us to move to that deluxe apartment in the sky-y-y, so to say.

On Sunday, this column and many of the features you read each week in the Flavor section will join with stories from the At Home section as well as fashion, parenting and pet columns, and articles each week in a new journalism condo we’re calling BayLife Magazine.

Not everything will be the same, unfortunately. As with all moves, (Gosh, this relocation metaphor is getting tiresome), Orlando-based columnists Pam Brandon and Anne-Marie Hodges, better known as The Divas of Dish, end their 20-month run with us. Their playful recipes were like a vacation for the taste buds. Their helping of sass and fun-loving attitude helped us remake the Flavor section earlier this year with a much more lighthearted tone.

We also say goodbye to Tony “Fatso” Siciliano, our king of barbecue and grilling, who joined after the Flavor section switched in March to a tab format. Thanks to his column, I’ve stolen more grilling tips than I’ll ever admit. We thank him for his work and wish him well with his “On the Grill” radio show each Saturday on WFLA 970 AM.

Jaden Hair’s Steamy Kitchen column will continue to appear weekly in BayLife Magazine, but Greg and Michelle Baker’s Culinary Sherpas column will run every other week.

“Recipes Lost & Found”? It’s making the move. “Consumers Ask”? Same. “Greasy Remote, “Cravings” and “Eat Their Words” will still run with the same regularity, too, just on Sunday instead of Wednesday.

All of which means - if I haven’t been clear - that the Flavor section will end its publication with the section you have in your hands today.

We at the Tribune all know it will be hard for you. Routines are always difficult to change, and the Flavor section has run on Wednesdays like clockwork since John McCain was a toddler. Flavor was a section you held on to, read during the week, shopped with on Saturdays and cooked with on Sundays. You and other readers have a relationship with Flavor. Recipes you clipped in 1968 are still in your files, just in case someone needs one they can’t find. As I wrote in March when we changed formats, I’ve always been honored to be a part of a section readers deeply cared about. To that end, we’ve tried to cover your life with food, not just about what was in the pan, on the plate or in your glass.

But this change is not only inevitable, it’s necessary.

While we’re all up in this change thing, feel free to drop into my food blog, The Stew. I’ll be posting items there more often - especially on Wednesdays when you want them the most. And the food channel on TBO.com with the catchy address - www2.tbo.com/static/sections/ tbo-life-food/ - will feature more stories, podcasts and videos as well.

If you want to chat about the changes, I’ll be glad to talk or e-mail with you. I’d also love to hear your ideas about what food stories you’d like me to write.

The Tribune made some cuts this week, four editorial employees that I’ve been able to sniff out so far with the biggest name being editorial page columnist Joe Brown. Embedded in the Coats memo that follows are the names of others who made the latest cut and still have news jobs:

(more…)

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Our parent company filed a Chapter 11 reorganization case in federal bankruptcy court this morning, the result of a slowing economy exacerbated by debts it took on in May 2007 in buying the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper alt-newspapers.

CEO Ben Eason

“I don’t see this as bad news,” CL’s CEO Ben Eason said at a noon staff meeting in Tampa. Many other media companies have been hurt in this economy, and others are successfully reorganizing their finances or changing the terms of their debt to cope, he added.

Eason addressed staff in Tampa this morning to announce the legal action after the media company’s board voted early this morning to file in bankrtupcy court in Tampa. He was upbeat about Chapter 11’s ability to ease the debt crunch the newspaper chain is facing as it tries to increase its online presence while at the same time dealing with falling print revenues because of the housing crisis and resulting slower economy.

“This company has got cash,” he said. “This is not a cash issue. This is not a management issue. It’s strictly the economy tanking.”

Eason continued: “This company is not a sinking ship. We have an excellent shot at coming out of this with a fresh start” and redrawn debt repayment terms.

Eason added that employees and vendors would continue to be paid and the newspapers in six U.S. markets would continue to publish weekly. No layoffs or other changes are anticipated as part of the Chapter 11 case, he said.

Ironically, CL was poised across all its newspapers to make cuts in its editorial budgets by the end of October in an attempt to free up more cash to make debt payments. With the debt issue on hold because of the bankruptcy court action, Eason said he has told editors those cuts now do not have to be made. The cuts had not been revealed here in Tampa, but in Washington they had been the focus of stories in the press for about a month.

The bankruptcy filing was caused by an inability to generate enough revenues in the current advertising sales slump nationally to satisfy the debt payments and terms of the debt taken on in the purchase of the Chicago and Washington papers last year.

Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code shields a company from its creditors while it puts together a reorganization plan that must be approved by the court. While it is possible that the court could take many different actions — from dissolving the company to forcing its sale or breakup — Eason said those actions are highly unlikely in CL’s case. “We’re going full steam ahead” in growing the newspapers’ online presence, he said. “Just watch us.”

Among the largest unsecured creditors is Fayetteville Publishing Co., which prints the Tampa Bay edition and some of the other papers in the group. The Georgia Department of Labor, the Georgia Department of Revenue and the IRS are also among the creditors. The listing of creditors on a bankruptcy filing doesn’t indicate, as some news accounts suggested, that Creative Loafing was not paying its vendors or taxes, Eason said; it is merely a court-required list of those companies that do business with CL.

Creative Loafing was founded in 1972 by Debby Eason in Atlanta and later opened several other papers in the Southeast. Ben, who owned the Tampa paper, acquired the rest of the family newspapers in 2000.

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Fully 40 percent of the locally experienced work force there over the age of 50, reports the Times media critic Eric Deggans:

In a memo to staffers this morning, St. Petersburg Times editor, CEO and [c]hairman Paul Tash tells staffers that strong response to the company’s early retirement incentives means “we can avoid the general layoffs I warned might be coming” when the voluntary retirement offer was closed.

Tash says 200 staffers across the company, 150 full time and 50 part time, accepted the enhanced retirement benefit, or 40 percent of all staff aged 50 and up with five years’ service or more.

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Here’s a sneak peak of the movie everyone (especially angry conservatives looking to score political points) will be talking about this fall. Presenting the first trailer for Oliver Stone’s W.

• Bush to leave behind a $482 billion deficit — and that doesn’t include “the full cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential $50 billion cost of another economic stimulus package, or the possibility of steeper losses in tax revenues if individual income or corporate profits decline.”
• You know the nation is in trouble when the Justice Department is guilty of repeatedly breaking the law.
• “Nuclear weapons are so 20th century.”
• McCain has part of his face removed; Obama’s hip hurts.
• Obama narrows the veep list … maybe.
• BlackLight’s not just for your Jimi Hendrix posters anymore.
• Amy Winehouse leaves the hospital, Kelsey Grammer checks in.
• Helpful tips for hallucinating the natural way.

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As I wrote about last week, former Tampa Tribune foreign correspondent Tim Collie was laid off from his job at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a victim of the industry and new Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell’s plans to remake newspapers in his own image. Here’s a shot smuggled out to me of Collie’s desk after he was shown the door, a makeshift shrine to his work and awards:

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The hammer is dropping at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and one name on the list sticks out for me, my former colleague at the Tampa Tribune, Tim Collie. (h/t to The Daily Pulp)

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My story in the print edition of CL this week details the personnel changes and newsroom reconfigurations going on at the Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times. It focuses on intern Jessie DaSilva, who blogged about Coats newsroom explanation of how she hopes to combat the tough times that led her to lay off 11 editorial staffers two weeks ago. The full story is here.

Bonus cut: DaSilva would agree only to an e-mail interview, and here is her entire exchange with me about the reaction to her blog, which supported Coats’ plan and was seen by some as either naive or uncaring about the reporters who lost their jobs. My questions were, Did you have any hesitation about posting your thoughts on the layoffs and realignments?
Any regrets?
Has management at the paper had any reaction to your blog? In the past, I know from some reporters they have told folks not to discuss newspaper business in personal blogs.
What is your reaction to all the comments and reaction your post attracted?
Are you the incoming Alligator editor? If so, what lessons do you take back to that paper from this realignment?

And DaSilva’s e-mail back to me: (more…)

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Inside the layoffs at the Trib, as reported by intern Jessica DaSilva. Commenters praise her passion (admirable) while criticizing her spelling (lamentable). As for Editor Janet Coats’ quote that the Tampa Tribune is an “add-on” to TBO.com, not vice versa: Is this a bravely candid acknowledgment of the reality of today’s media, or (like Jessica’s spelling) the death knell for journalism as we know it? Or both? Opinions vary, but to newspaper editors everywhere, the debate is familiar.

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Wait a second, didn’t Sam Zell say that the news-ad mix was going to have to change to about 50-50?!? So how in the world is the new O-Sentinel going to achieve that AND keep its standalone business and feature sections? Not to mention sports, which rarely has any ads to speak of?

Here’s a multimedia explanation by the Orlando editors about the new design that launches Monday.

I have to say, for all the talk about change and inventing a new newspaper, the Orlando redesign is very old school. Same sections, A-section, Metro, Biz, Sports, Features. When is somebody going to try something truly different, really revolutionary?

(h/t to Journerdism)

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From Daily Pulp:

What New Times reported last week is now official: The Herald is cutting 17 percent of its workforce, or 250 positions, which is actually 2 percent more than we expected.

“These next few weeks will be some of the most difficult and emotional we have faced,” Editor Anders Gyllenhaal wrote to staff in an email this morning. “We will do our best to work through these changes at the same time as we try to keep our focus on our work.”

Some will be laid off, other will be offered buyouts. Buyouts were in fact extended this morning to numerous reporters, according to sources, which Gyllenhaal wrote will “first be made on a voluntary basis and then an involuntary basis.”

It is part of a 10 percent across-the-board staff cuts at McClatchy newspapers, as the AP is reporting this morning:

McClatchy Co. said Monday it will cut 10 percent of its work force in a move to save $70 million a year as the newspaper publisher continues to struggle to attract advertising dollars.

McClatchy, which publishes The Kansas City Star and The Miami Herald, will trim about 1,400 employees. The staff reductions are part of a plan to reduce overall expenses by $95 million to $100 million over the next four quarters.

“The effects of the current national economic downturn — particularly in real estate, auto and employment advertising — make it essential that we move faster now to realign our workforce and make our operations more efficient,” said McClatchy Chief Executive Gary Pruitt, in a statement.

McClatchy said in April that it swung to a loss in the first quarter as a weakening economy and competition from online rivals led to a 15 percent plunge in advertising revenues at its newspapers.

In related bad news, some staffers at the Tampa Tribune expect the hammer to drop this week as involuntary layoffs follow a voluntary buyout that saw a handful of newsers leave last Friday. One source told me late last week: “The end is near.”

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