Newsday is cutting 120 jobs

BY KEIKO MORRIS | keiko.morris@newsday.com

7:28 PM EST, February 28, 2008

Newsday publisher Tim Knight Thursday announced that the newspaper will be cutting about 120 jobs throughout the company, citing declining sales and the "soft advertising revenue environment."

The reduction in Newsday's workforce -- about 5 percent -- comes as many news organizations nationwide have been cutting jobs to survive an already tough and competitive marketplace made more difficult by a slowing economy. Two weeks ago, several other news organizations owned by Newsday's parent company Tribune Co. -- Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Hartford Courant and the Chicago Tribune Media Group -- announced staff reductions affecting about 300 employees.

"My foremost responsibility is to ensure that we are a healthy organization equipped and motivated to succeed in this rapidly changing and challenging marketplace," Knight said in a memo to the staff. "Though we all know we will not grow by cutting, we have no choice but to respond to the revenue decline and make cost adjustments now."

The company did not disclose how many management jobs will be eliminated. Of the union positions, at least 25 of those reductions will take place in the newsroom on top of 13 vacant positions that have gone unfilled. The pressroom will be reduced by at least 24 union positions and the transportation bargaining unit will be reduced by at least five drivers, according to Zachary Dowdy, vice president of the Editorial Unit of Local 406.

The company will reduce the number of union positions through voluntary buyout offers and, if necessary, involuntary layoffs.

Dennis Grabhorn, president Local 406 of the Graphic Communications Conference/International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said he did not agree with the constant cuts, noting that it has been only a year and a half since the last contract was signed and a substantial job reduction made. "Really all of this paper is doing now is getting rid of more Indians and keeping the chiefs," Grabhorn said.

"I just don't understand how a newspaper being the only daily newspaper on an island with more than 3 million people can have a circulation of less than 400,000 readers," Grabhorn later added. "I find that hard to accept. I don't understand why Newsday cannot sell on this island and that just tells me that Newsday is not putting effort into growing circulation."

The newsroom will be reorganized to adjust to the staff cuts and those plans will be shared with editors over the following days, said Newsday Editor John Mancini.

"The goal is to emerge with a newsroom that will continue to cover Long Island in depth, with the accuracy our audience has long expected and the urgency they demand, in print and, now, increasingly online," Mancini said in a memo to the staff.