Newspapers

Gannett is offering buyouts to anyone in its Community Publishing division who is over 56 with 20 years of service at the company, according to a memo posted by Jim Romenesko.

As a reminder of how huge Gannett is, that applies to 785 people, but Gannett is going to accept “only” up to 665 employees, split among Gannett’s properties. For example, at the Asbury Park (NJ) Press, up to 47 people can take the buyout, while at Florida Today (in Brevard County, Fla.) only 11 volunteers will be accepted.

Gannett Blog’s Jim Hopkins says that the buyout “represent[s] a major shift in the company’s payroll reduction strategy” for a company that usually implements layoffs or unpaid furlough days.

Also, “Until now, GCI has never extended buyouts to such a broad group of employees simultaneously.”

Employees have 45 days to volunteer. It’s unclear how much money Gannett hopes/needs to save from this program and whether Gannett will resort to layoffs if it can’t reach the desired number of cuts through volun

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The Washington Post announced a voluntary buyout program today that will affect up to 48 people, or eight percent of the newsroom staff.

The AFP reports that the offer is not being extended to all newsroom departments and certain volunteers will be turned down if “we feel their departure would impair our journalism,” executive editor Marcus Brauchli said. “That said, it is important that we achieve real savings.”

According to ombudsman Patrick Pexton:

Depts protected under buyout: natl politics, natl security; foreign; investigative; Style/Sports columnists, Weekend, Sunday Outlook

— Patrick Pexton (@WaPoOmbudsman) February 8, 2012

Also protected under buyout graphics and Capital Business

— Patrick Pexton (@WaPoOmbudsman) February 8, 2012

Unprotected under buyout: Metro/local, photo, sports, business, Style editors and reporters, and everything else in newsroom.

— Patrick Pexton (@WaPoOmbudsman) February 8, 2012

Update: Pexton wrote us to say he was mistaken about the investigative team being protected from the buyout. They are, indeed eligible for the buyout. Here’s his corrected tweet:

Post buyouts. Correction from earlier. Investigative team is eligible for buyouts. National Enterprise team not eligible.

— Patrick Pexton (@WaPoOmbudsman) February 8, 2012

The Post company is scheduled to announce its fourth-quarter earnings at the end of the month. The newspaper’s third-quarter earnings showed a steep decline in both print and online revenues.

Halifax Media Group has laid off 30 of the 50 staffers it acquired from the New York Times Regional Media Group headquarters in Tampa, according to a memo obtained by Poynter Mediawire. The HQ was home to the management team that supervised the 16 papers purchased by Halifax, including marketing staff, product managers, developers and salespeople.

The 20 HQ employees who were not laid off face a choice: relocate 2.5 hours away to Daytona Beach or join the ranks of the unemployed. According to Poynter, the developers and salespeople were offered positions, while all the marketing employees and all but one product manager were laid off.

Halifax was bound by the terms of its purchase to only lay off 10 percent of the 2,000-person-total staff, but that requirement only applied to layoffs at the sale’s closing, which happened late last year.

The newspapers themselves, not the HQ, can expect more layoff news in the next month or so, Poynter reports.

Employees at the St. Paul Pioneer Press have extended a shortened workweek in exchange for a no-layoff guarantee through March 31, averting possible layoffs, MinnPost reports.

Two years ago, the paper was the only MediaNews-owned property that was losing money, and management instituted the shortened workweek and pay reductions in exchange for a yearlong no-layoff guarantee. That guarantee has since been extended a few times, saving about 30 union jobs (though non-union managers have been let go during this time). The paper is now owned by John Paton’s DigitalFirst, the company possibly trying the hardest to transform newspapers into profitable online news organizations.

Newspaper publisher and broadcast station owner Media General today reported a Q4 2011 loss of $3.3 million on revenues of $168 million, as the company’s severance costs and impairment charges overwhelmed its operating income of $27 million dollars.

Without the special charges, the company would have reported $4.5 million in income, less than half the income from the fourth quarter of 2010. Those $168 million in revenues were $22 million lower than the revenue from a year prior.

Partially offsetting the decline in revenues was an 8.6 percent decrease in operating costs, the company said.

Digital revenues, a closely watched line item for media companies, made up just 5 percent of the company’s revenue.

Media General owns the Tampa Tribune, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, 19 other newspapers and 18 TV stations. In mid-December, the company laid off 165 at the Tampa Tribune, costing $3.5 million in severance costs.

Outgoing Post managing editor Raju Narisetti apparently gave a presentation to the DC chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists earlier this month in which he said the Post would likely eliminate 100 positions over the next two years.

“The cuts do not necessarily mean layoffs and could come from buyouts like ones the Post has done in the past,” a reporter covering the meeting wrote.

Despite the downsizing, Narisetti told the assembled journos that “You’ll be surprised to hear this, but there has never been a better time to be a journalist.”

At any rate, Narisetti is leaving the Post on Feb. 1 but it’s not inconceivable at all that a staff reduction plan he put into place would go into effect after his tenure was up.

According to Jim Romenesko who had this first from a tipster, this few-weeks-old tidbit is “causing an uproar in the Washington Post newsroom.”

The investors seeking to buy a majority of MaineTodayMedia – publisher of the Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel – demanded fifty changes to the contract before they would agree to the purchase.

Today, the Portland Newspaper Guild rejected those changes, so the 2100 Trust will not be making its purchase.

Without the infusion of money, the company faces bankruptcy. MaineToday Media is $7.6 million in debt, reports Al Diamon.

Some sources told Diamon that bankruptcy might be a preferred option to the deal, which wasn’t guaranteed to keep the company out of bankruptcy anyway. But Guild president Tom Bell denies that:
“We have no illusions about bankruptcy,” Bell said. Bankruptcy is not a good place for us. We understand that.”

McClatchy has decided it will consolidate the copy desks at the Sacramento Bee and four other California papers. Wednesday, the company announced it had chosen the location of the consolidated desk: Sacramento.

It is “undoubtedly good news for the employees of the Sacramento Bee and the Sacramento community,” writes Guild chair Ed Fletcher, but “the news is less rosy for our brethren in Modesto and Merced.”

Bee management has previously said that the consolidation would create 20-30 jobs, a mix of full and part-time, in Sacramento. But of course it also means that many of the copy editors elsewhere will not be transitioning to Sacramento.

When the publisher of the Virginian-Pilot announced layoffs in September, he called them “difficult and painful.”

Staffers are less sure that publisher Maurice Jones is feeling any of that pain, now that records show he received more than a half-million dollars in salary and a $263,000 bonus between Jan. 1, 2010, and Oct. 4, 2011.

Jones’s compensation only became public because he was nominated to deputy secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Washington Times reports.

Jones laid off 50 people in September 2011, the paper’s fourth round of layoffs since late 2008. According to the Times, no senators asked questions about Jones’ bonus pay during his confirmation hearing in November, which was held days before the newspaper reported on the layoffs.

The Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) cut its staffers pay by 5% for five months starting last September to save $1 million. Pay should have been restored at the end of this month.

Instead, the paper is extending the pay cuts at least through April. Management will “take stock of our situation” in May, according to a memo from CEO Paul Tash obtained by Romenesko.

While this measure continues, staffers will continue to receive an extra day off per month.

Layoffs hit the Poynter-owned paper in October.