Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 11, 2009, at 2:00 pm
Back when it started, TBO.com was a pioneering website, easy to navigate with lots of good info fed into it from a robust Tampa Tribune and WFLA-TV newsroom.
Today, 15 years after its birth, TBO.com is the growth engine on Parker Street for Media General, but it is a shadow of itself content-wise. It also uses video poorly (given all its access to video from owning the top-rated local TV station) and has an absolutely incomprehensible and unnavigable blog structure.
August 11, 2009 – Today, TBO.com celebrates 15 years of serving the Tampa Bay community online. August 11, 1994 marked the first date of online publishing for TBO.com, making The Tampa Tribune one of the first newspapers in the nation with a dedicated news Web site.
… Today, TBO.com serves more than 3 million unique visitors each month with well over 20 million page views every month. TBO.com recently introduced new interactive elements to its site including VIPIR Interactive Radar from Storm Team 8 allowing users to zoom down to street level and view storms just above their neighborhoods. TBOsnap.com launched as the new user video submission tool, allowing Tampa Bay residents to record news and report it straight from their video cell phones via e-mail to myshots@tbosnap.com. Also as a leader in mobile Web technology, m.tbo.com recently released news and weather videos on the iphone platform and is receiving record views from TBO mobile iphone users.
“The biggest change in 15 years has been the growth of digital news – first on the Web, and now on mobile and social networks. We’re proud of the team that’s dedicated to the success of this 24 hour news service and that continues to work every day to make us Tampa’s No.1 source for breaking news,” says TBO.com’s Content Director, Loren Omoto.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 10, 2009, at 10:45 am
Another TV news personality has been urged not to have children. The twist is that this time it is a male anchor, not a woman.
For those not enamored of following Florida media insider baseball, you can bail out now. But for the rest of us media whores, there is a wonderful story that has been playing out for a week or so in Miami, where the ABC affiliate WPLG has fired one of its anchors who now claims it is because he is (gasp!) gay.
Charles Perez has fought back, with a sexual orientation discrimination complaint (which he claims triggered the firing) and a blog post in the Daily Beast in which he details his claims that station management was afraid of his increasing gay profile and urged him not to have children with his male partner. (The station, in written statements, denies Perez’s allegations.)
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 22, 2009, at 10:05 am
From Media General, which owns TBO.com, the Tampa Tribune and News Channel 8 in this market:
RICHMOND, Va., July 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Media General, Inc. (NYSE: MEG – News) today reported net income for the second quarter of 2009 of $20.6 million, or 90 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $532.2 million in the 2008 period, which included a non-cash, after-tax impairment charge of $532.1 million. The current quarter included a $7.1 million after-tax gain on the sale of a CW television station in Jacksonville, Fla., a $3.6 million tax benefit that resulted from a favorable determination concerning a state tax issue, and $7.5 million of tax benefits attributable to the company’s first-half results from continuing operations. Excluding severance expense from both quarters, and last year’s impairment charge, income from continuing operations before taxes was $3.8 million in 2009’s second quarter compared with $2.6 million in the year-ago quarter.
“A 23-percent decrease in total operating costs year-over-year was a major contributor to the company’s improved operating results, helping to offset a 20 percent revenue decline. Actions driving the lower expenses included reductions in force across the company, a furlough program, a suspension of matching in the company’s 401(k) plan in 2009, and the final freeze of the company’s pension plan effective May 31, 2009. Service accruals ceased in the partial freeze of the plan in 2006 and now future salary increases do not affect retirement benefits. Media General has implemented many difficult but necessary expense reductions that strengthen our ability to weather the deep recession and recognize the reduced revenue streams available in our business. As a result, we are in a stronger position to take advantage of an economic recovery,” said Marshall N. Morton, president and chief executive officer.
“Our aggressive cost elimination actions were particularly evident in our Publishing segment, which generated a $12 million profit in the current quarter compared with $6.8 million in the prior-year. Publishing revenues declined 20.3 percent in the second quarter, about the same as the first quarter. We saw the rate of Classified advertising declines abate somewhat in the second quarter compared to the first quarter of 2009, mostly in the automotive category, and particularly in our Florida, Virginia and Alabama markets. The decline in Retail advertising in the current period was also less severe than in the first quarter of 2009.
Claire Enders, the chief executive of Enders Analysis, told a Commons committee that newspapers would close across Britain because revenues would collapse by 52% – or £1.3bn – between 2007 and 2013.
“We are expecting up to half of all the 1,300 titles will close in the next five years,” Enders told the Commons culture, media and sport select committee hearing on the future of local and regional media.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 14, 2009, at 8:09 am
As the new models for journalism start to emerge, here is another piece of that puzzle, from The New York Times:
Four nonprofit groups devoted to investigative journalism will have their work distributed by The Associated Press, The A.P. will announce on Saturday, greatly expanding their potential audience and helping newspapers fill the gap left by their own shrinking resources.
Starting on July 1, the A.P. will deliver work by the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica to the 1,500 American newspapers that are A.P. members, which will be free to publish the material.
The A.P. called the arrangement a six-month experiment that could later be broadened to include other investigative nonprofits, and to serve its nonmember clients, which include broadcast and Internet outlets.
Posted by David Warner on May. 27, 2009, at 5:01 pm
A small but vocal group of protestors, both gay and straight, stood at the busy corner of 66th St. and 49th Ave. N. in Pinellas Tuesday night, armed with handmade signs and the passionate conviction that the California Supreme Court decision upholding the Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage was a slap in the face to gays and lesbians everywhere. With storm clouds gathering above, they stood their ground and talked to CL.
Beth Fountain, a writer and former lawyer, questioned the dense language of the decision, in which the court essentially contradicted its position from a year before.
Like Fountain, musician Lisa Noe of the band Karmic Tattoo wondered why gay marriage could be “OK one minute, then it’s not OK the next.” And Rick Boylan, president of the Pinellas chapter of Stonewall Democrats and the secretary of the state Democratic party, pointed out that, even with the setback in California, the state is still years ahead of Florida in its recognition of gay rights: “We’re still dealing with issues that are left over from Anita Bryant days.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 27, 2009, at 10:11 am
More newsroom cuts at the Media General news outlets in Tampa have been announced from the News Center on Parker Street. From TBO.com:
The Florida Communications Group today laid off 25 full-time positions from its newsrooms at The Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and WFLA News Channel 8.
The reasoning is familiar to those following economics of the news industry: The continued downturn in advertising revenue across nearly all media outlets.
“This is unfortunately the same song in the sixth verse,” said Janet Coats, executive editor and vice president at FCG who oversees the combined newsroom. “Conditions have not changed in advertising.”
Two sources tell me the cuts include reporters Rich Shopes and Valerie Kalfrin and political editor Tom Arthur.
UPDATE: More of the journalists who were affected in the Comments section below.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 15, 2009, at 2:06 pm
What else are you going to do after you cut daily home delivery to an entire county? Raise your rack prices.
The Tampa Tribune will increase the price of single copy newspapers – those sold at stores and in boxes — starting Monday.
Single copies of the newspaper will now cost 75 cents Monday through Saturday and $1 on Sunday.
“Most metropolitan newspapers charge in these price ranges for their newspaper as single copy purchases. We publish a fresh, unique, local paper every single day,” said Denise Palmer, publisher and president of the paper in a prepared statement.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 14, 2009, at 8:56 am
I came to Tampa Bay in 1988 to work for the Tampa Tribune in Pinellas County, then on the front lines of the newspaper war with the St. Petersburg Times. So it is with sadness I read this story about the Trib finally giving up the fight, from the Times:
The Tampa Tribune will be ceasing daily subscription service in Pinellas County after this weekend, according to a flier distributed in the newspaper this morning.
The flier said that weekend or daily subscription will change to Sunday delivery only, beginning Sunday, May 17. It offers a courtesy subscription to USA Today through May 22, and tells readers to “watch your mailbox for a special offer” for the national publication.
Posted by Jim Johnson on May. 13, 2009, at 5:10 am
By Jim Johnson PoHo contributor and founder of The State of Sunshine blog
Jack Shafer has an excellent piece on Slate.com about the real impact Americans will see when newspapers across the country stop. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 27, 2009, at 11:49 am
I suppose that looking at print circulation numbers is anachronistic, if not downright depressing. But the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s Fas-Fax report is out and it is across-the-board bad news for Florida print journalism.
Circulation fell at all major FLA dailies, and it fell 7 percent across the nation. That is 3 million-plus fewer print readers than six months ago.
The St. Petersburg Times remains one of the nation’s top 25 circulated newspapers, but like its counterparts, the Times’ daily numbers are eroding.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations ranked the Times 22nd in the nation in Monday through Friday circulation over a six-month period ending in March despite a 10 percent dip that brought its daily print run to 283,093 compared to 316,007 a year ago. Although it lost more than 32,000 subscribers over the past year, its declines weren’t as sharp as many other newspapers in the top 25, and it even moved ahead of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in overall Monday through Friday circulation.
Daily circulation at The Tampa Tribune dropped by more than 25,000 subscribers Monday through Friday, representing an 11.4 percent drop to 195,277 subscribers. The Sarasota-Herald Tribune lost 17,650 subscribers, a 15.4 percent fall to an average of 97,254 subscribers.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 15, 2009, at 6:49 am
Don’t know where people are going to get reliable, fact-checked news once the dailies go under, but it looks like we will get to find out pretty soon:
NEWSPAPER advertising, already in its worst slump since the Depression, suffered by far the sharpest drop in generations during the first quarter of 2009, down 30 percent for some papers, industry executives and analysts say.
Publishers will start to report first-quarter results this week, but people who follow the industry and have had a glimpse of the 2009 numbers say it is clear that once again, even the most pessimistic predictions were not dark enough. They are expecting declines sharp enough to wipe out profit margins at many papers that, despite two years of battering, had stayed comfortably in the black, and to push already-weak publishers closer to bankruptcy, perhaps even closure. “I think over all we’re going to see a decline somewhere in the mid-20s” compared to the first quarter of last year, said Edward Atorino, a media analyst at the Benchmark Company, a research firm. “There have been a lot of signals that things have gotten much worse in the last couple of months – the furloughs, the pay cuts, the layoffs.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 14, 2009, at 1:21 pm
‘Memba when Tampa Tribune top editor Janet Coats wrote a front-page double-bylined fluffer with her publisher about how vital the Trib remains etc.?
Well, now the Miami Herald has copied that journalistic model, with the ailing newspaper’s publisher writing a column today that is the equivalent of Kevin Bacon’s “Stay calm, all is well” speech in Animal House:
I want to assure you that our company remains a strong, stable and vital organization. We are proud of the fact that we have the largest news staff by far in South Florida. We are dedicated to providing the highest quality news and information, in English and in Spanish, day in and day out.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 14, 2009, at 1:15 pm
Media times are tough all over. The Tribune Co., owner of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, is in bankruptcy court and apparently is having trouble paying its file copying tab on a timely manner. So the clerk’s office in Palm Beach County has cut off Sun-Sentinel reporters, according to the Daily Pulp:
Hi all,
Just a heads up about something that may impact you the next time you request a court record from the Clerk’s office (either in person or by email). Unfortunately, until further notice, Sun Sentinel reporters will need to pay for court records when they receive them. The practice of billing your company at a later date is being suspended due to outstanding invoices with Tribune Media. We know the suspension of the Sentinel’s copy charge account makes your job more difficult, so we sincerely hope to we able to resume the convenience someday in the near future.
Julie Rosborough
Media Relations/External Communications Specialist – Communications Management
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 31, 2009, at 11:25 am
Holy sagging revenues, Batman, it’s a fire sale over at The News Center on Parker Street in downtown Tampa as the Media General-owned properties shed newscasts, employees, sections and real estate. The Tampa Tribune is shutting its bureaus and killing the BayLife magazine on Sunday; the TV station is cutting a newscast.
Details:
First, News Channel 8 is killing its midday newscast. Anchored by Gayle Guyardo and Bill Ratliff, the 11 a.m. newscast just wasn’t attracting advertisers, station officials said in a TBO.com report.
[News Director Don] North says the cutbacks at WFLA are the result of the continuing decline of advertising that is affecting television stations throughout the country.
“Advertisers just aren’t buying the 11 a.m. newscast,” he says. There has not been a decision made on what will replace the newscast, he added.
“Midday” anchors Bill Ratliff and Gayle Guyardo will continue on the “News Channel 8″ morning newscasts and contribute to online coverage.
More shocking is the loss of the Tampa Tribune,’s Sunday BayLife section, home to Twitter-champ Jeff Houck’s food writing. Not surprising from the standpoint of a dearth of ads in the section, but stunning from a readability angle. It is the only section of the now-miserable Sunday Trib that was worth reading, for Houck and for the gardening info alone, stuff you don’t see a whole lot of in other local publications.
The story gives no indication what will happen to that content, so I’m checking to see what I can hear.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 31, 2009, at 7:13 am
Gary Fineout used to cover the Legislature until the Miami Herald laid him off. He now freelances for papers such as The New York Times and writes his own blog, and he has news of a Senate bill by our own Ronda Storms that could further gut the finances of Florida newspapers.
At issue are those government-paid legal notices that keep some dailies and weeklies, such as La Gaceta in Tampa, alive. Here’s Fineout in The Fine Print:
The measure, SB 2292, would allow local governments to place legally required public notices on a government website as opposed to printing them in newspapers. The legislation is sponsored by Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon, who is pushing other bills designed to lower costs for government entities, including one that would remove requirements that money must be set aside to buy art for new state buildings.
The legislation spells out that legal notices can be placed on the Internet as long as the local government has a library or other facility where members of the public can access the Internet for free. Another requirement is that the government allow members of the public to register to receive notices by mail or e-mail.
While there is no definite revenue impact associated with the legislation, the Senate bill analysis notes that “the impact of this legislation on the newspaper industry is indeterminate but likely to be substantial.”
Ronda’s revenge against all that criticism and scrutiny she’s received from the news media?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 31, 2009, at 6:20 am
More budget cuts at Media General’s converged Tampa operations, as the company axed 65 positions, 12 of which were vacant. Doing the math, that means 53 news industry professionals hit the bricks.
The highest profile was sports co-anchor Dave Reynolds, one of a handful of journalists of color at the TV station. From The Feed:
Reynolds, 45, had been covering sports with one other anchor, Dan Lucas; he said WFLA never really named another lead sports anchor after former top dog J.P. Peterson left more than a year ago. The change also means WFLA has just three people of color among an on-air staff of 26 reporters and anchors.
Now, Reynolds says WFLA plans to use more staffers from the Tampa Tribune to help report sports stories on air. The station also has cut back the Sunday Sports Extra show, he says.
“It’s obviously tremendously disappointing,” adds Reynolds, who has a wife and 4-year-old son. “After a certain while, you think you might be safe…This year was arguably the biggest year ever for sports in the Tampa Bay area, with the World Series and Super Bowl and so many other stories. for us to do what we did with two people…we worked very hard.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 30, 2009, at 6:40 am
The Open Left blog raises an interesting philosophical question about the future of news media: do we try all kinds of machinations to save the existing traditional media or move to recognize the role of bloggers by getting them better pay?
One counter-argument that does make sense to me on both a political and personal level is that local newspapers provide good local jobs. The blogosphere, by contrast, is giving rise to something akin to a digital sweatshop. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Americans are producing enormous amount of content for pay that is just above, or below, minimum wage and includes neither benefits nor weekends. That is not a sustainable model for the people producing the content. If that is the brave new future we face, then maybe instead of talking about saving newspapers, we should be talking about creating a national union hall for paid blogging. If a news outlet, or a computer company, or a progressive organization want to hire someone to blog for them, maybe there need to be standard, minimum rates of pay that everyone is forced to observe. Any website that does not observe that policy gets de-linked, or something.
The story mentions a bill introduced last week that would allow newspapers to operate as 501(c)3 nonprofits, similar to the public broadcasting model. One big change in that model: nonprofits are not allowed to make political endorsements.
The pall looming over U.S. newspapers grew even darker Monday as Gannett Co. informed most of its employees that they will have to take another week of unpaid leave this spring, while a Michigan daily unveiled plans to close its print edition after 174 years.
And The Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper, also ordered pay cuts of 8 percent and 10-day furloughs for nonunion employees Monday to cut costs as advertising revenue drops.
The moves were just the latest sign of the distress afflicting newspapers across the country as they try to cope with a dramatic shift in advertising that is forcing publishers to figure out how to survive with substantially less revenue.
In the Tampa Bay media market, Gannett owns WTSP-TV 10 Connects.
Given a recent Pew report indicating a public losing ties to the newspaper industry, what does it mean when a large media company considers a web-only version of a newspaper that has printed since the 1850’s? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 25, 2009, at 3:01 pm
There are so many blog posts about “the future of journalism” (we had one here just this week), but this one is about its past, an attitude of service and storytelling that is getting increasingly rare.
Some day, unfortunately in the very near future, Stephanie Hayes’ work is the kind of writing we are going to miss about old-fashioned, storytelling journalism. Not because no one will want to do it, or that no one will think of doing it, but because nobody can pay you to do it any more.
Here is the St. Petersburg Times‘ Hayes’ story about her time on the obit beat, during which she crafted some amazing, small gems of narrative storytelling under tough situations and in relatively few words. She is 25, and she rocks. I’m sorry I missed it in Sunday’s paper, and I’m sorry the Times can’t afford to have a Floridian section every day because this is the kind of thing you could expect daily from it:
The week before I started the job, I sat at the kitchen table with my grandpa. I explained what I’d be doing, the best I could. Truthfully, I wasn’t totally sure.
Dead people. Obituaries.
He had just the gift for me! He went to the basement and brought back a rusty old biscuit tin. I flipped it open, a mushroom of must and news clips swelling out.
A box of death.
For years, he’d snipped obits from his Lorain, Ohio, paper, the Morning Journal. There were a couple of interesting locals, but mostly celebrities like Dinah Shore and Burt Lancaster and Gene Autry and Gene Autry’s sidekick. People he spent his life watching.
Buried deep, there was a prayer card for Padre Pio, a saint believed to have cured the sick.
As we sat together reading of heart attacks and cancer and stroke, I wondered – what was the fascination with death? And how could I spend my days in it?
You can (and should) read the full story here. And understand the passion that still drives some people in this financially troubled industry.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 25, 2009, at 1:40 pm
E.W. Scripps posted a fourth-quarter loss and said it will cut salaries at its newspapers and reduce benefits at all of its properties.
Scripps owns Channel 28, ABC Action News in Tampa. According to The New York Times:
Scripps, which owns a chain of local newspapers and TV stations, told employees Wednesday that it was cutting most salaries at newspapers and in corporate offices by 3 to 5 percent, suspending its matching 401(k) contributions and planning to freeze pensions later this year.
The moves are expected to save $20 million this year.
Scripps lost $19.4 million in the latest quarter, compared with earnings of $44.7 million in the same quarter a year ago.
Scripps employees join other at the St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune-News Channel 8-TBO.com who earlier this year had their 401(k)’s and pensions frozen, ended or suspended.
Last month, I wrote a post here on Political Whore about US Airways flight 1549, which landed in the Hudson river with all aboard safe. The first images where not from a major news organization or a photojournalist, they were from a bystander and were disseminated via Twitter. It eventually prompted a response earlier this month from Michael Hussey at Pushing Rope with an interesting discussion about news. Read the rest of this entry »
Philadelphia Newspapers L.L.C., which owns The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com, filed for bankruptcy protection today in a bid to restructure its $390 million in debt load.
The company, bought by a group of Philadelphia-area investors for $562 million in 2006, said the voluntary Chapter 11 filing would not interrupt its daily operations.
“This restructuring is focused solely on our debt, not our operations,” chief executive officer Brian P. Tierney, who led the group that provided about $150 million of the purchase price three years ago, said in a news release.
Employees of Media General Inc., the Richmond, Va., parent of The Tampa Tribune, News Channel 8, TBO.com and Centro, will take a mandatory 10 days off without pay during the remainder of the year, President and Chief Executive Marshall N. Morton said in an e-mail to workers this afternoon.
“So far in 2009, economic and corporate earnings reports have been worse than expected,” Morton said in announcing the furlough plan.
“Despite aggressive sales initiatives and significant cost reductions, I regret to report that we need to build in additional expense savings to offset the revenue shortfalls our divisions anticipate.”
Continuing our streak of scooping up talented longtime journalists from other outlets, the St. Petersburg Times has hired Irene Maher, former medical editor at the Tampa NBC affiliate WFLA-Ch. 8, to contribute a column to the newspaper’s weekly health page, Pulse.
Maher, who was laid off last year from WFLA after 23 years, will work for the Times part-time, also contributing material to the newspaper’s Web site.
The Times has also featured work by laid off Tribune columnist Dan Ruth, displaced Creative Loafing writer Wade Tatangelo and former Tribune classical music critic Kurt Loft.
Miami Herald Publisher David Landsberg informed all Herald employees this morning in an e-mail that newspaper would be laying off more employees in the coming weeks.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 5, 2009, at 4:14 pm
Another installment from our Sad, But True Dep’t. “I love the Weather & Opera section…”
Yes, we journalists did it to ourselves, in part. And yes, I know this vid mocks The New York Times, but I think the lesson applies across the board. I found it silly earlier this week to see a great newspaper being forced to offer buyouts and cut benefits and yet still throw four (yes, that’s 4, count ‘em) reporters and at least one photog on a story about Denny’s offering free Grand Slam Breakfasts.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 4, 2009, at 2:24 pm
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune joins the cutback gang today, announcing it is getting rid of a total of 47 employees. Its companywide staff now stands at 350, or 40 percent lower than its real-estate-boom height just three years ago.
Like other businesses contending with the deep recession, the Herald-Tribune Media Group cut more jobs on Tuesday and said that it would end home delivery in Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda in March.
Forty-eight Herald-Tribune employees were laid off, including 31 SNN News 6 staffers who received severance packages Tuesday after being furloughed a week ago.
In November, the Herald-Tribune announced that it was exploring a sale of the station to LDB Media LLC, a company run by SNN general manager Linda DesMarais and her husband, Doug Barker. That deal could still go through with a re-launch of SNN in coming weeks. Asked whether she had enough investors lined up, DesMarais said, “We are very close.”
Herald-Tribune Publisher Diane McFarlin said, “We are certainly open to revisiting the deal under the terms we have negotiated if Linda and Doug are able to get everything in place within a couple of weeks.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 3, 2009, at 1:43 pm
Employees at the St. Petersburg Times were told today that the newspaper is making some more quiet cuts/adjustments to its bottom line. Significant on the list: the media company’s employees who didn’t take last year’s buyout offer will be asked again to consider the package.
In addition, the Times is stopping its contributions to employee 401(k) plans, freezing pension credits for those longer-term employees still eligible for pensions (the company stopped offering pensions to new hires some time ago) and extending a 1-year wage freeze that was set to expire on June 1 for another year.
Media General, the owner of Newschannel 8, TBO and the Tampa Tribune, publicly announced similar benefit cuts in January.
UPDATE: After my post I got my hands on the e-mail announcement, it follows the jump. The Times’ Eric Deggans also writes about the move.
The Tampa Tribune became the latest newspaper to deliver copies of the New Testament to subscribers as a part of national effort by the International Bible Society, distributing 56,500 copies in its Saturday edition before the Super Bowl.
The effort was spearheaded by a pair of local residents who raised about $127,000 from 15 area chruches and 19 local businesses, including McNichols Co., AnazaoHealth Corp., Ferman Automotive Group, Idlewild Baptist Church, Florida Dental Centers and Bayshore Baptist Church.
In the coming weeks, the number of jobs across Editorial will be reduced by 70 positions, or 11%. As part of this move, we will be putting into place the final pieces of the newsroom reorganization that we began last year. This includes reclassifying jobs, reconfiguring desks, revamping our workflow and exploring new topic teams. The goal remains to operate a 24/7 newsgathering operation that delivers information to Southern California residents in any medium they consume it.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 19, 2009, at 11:58 am
This just in: The owner of the Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and Newschannel 8 is suspending its contribution to the employee 401(k) program starting April 1.
From: MG Employee Communications
Sent: Mon 1/19/2009
Subject: Letter from Marshall Morton
Dear Fellow Employees,
Media General faces an extremely tough business climate in 2009. On the positive side, we got an early start addressing the softening economy and have significantly reduced expenses. We are ahead of many of our peers in implementing sound strategies to address the changes underway in our business. However, the deep global recession is making it difficult to forecast business performance for 2009. We anticipate continued revenue declines in nearly all advertising categories. It is prudent in times of uncertainty to manage our business and cash flow conservatively.
