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Newsday lays off 32 in cost-cutting move

By Mark Harrington | mark.harrington@newsday.com

4:14 PM EDT, May 30, 2008

As it awaits completion of a buyout by Cablevision Systems Corp., Newsday on Friday said it laid off 32 employees -- half in operations management and half from Star Community Publishing.

In a statement to employees Friday afternoon, publisher and chief executive Timothy Knight said the move, which comes atop a 120-person staff cut in March, would "reduce management layers in operations, clarify roles and responsibilities, and speed decision-making."

The memo said the cuts were "not connected to the pending sale transaction," but were instead "the result of our ongoing review of business operations to improve efficiency and adopt best-practice techniques." Most affected workers were managers in the pressroom, and none were from editorial functions. Knight declined an interview request.

Earlier this month, Bethpage-based Cablevision agreed to buy a 97-percent stake in Newsday from Tribune Co. for $650 million. Tribune, straining under a mountain of debt tied to its going-private transaction last year, has experienced declines in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles in reporting an 11 percent drop in first-quarter publishing revenue. Tribune chief executive Sam Zell said at the time, "Print ad revenues continue to be challenged by the weak economy's impact on real estate and classified advertising."

Friday afternoon, Tribune spokesman Gary Weitman said, "I suspect all of our businesses have been looking at the way they handle staffing based on the way business has been going," but added that decisions on job cuts are "locally driven."

None of the dismissed employees was from the Graphic Communications Conference, which represents Newsday's unionized editorial, pressroom and delivery workers. GCC international president George Tedeschi said the union in the past had expressed its belief to Newsday that management ranks were bloated in arguing against union staff cuts.

"We felt they had a significant number of managers that were not necessarily necessary to do the job," said Tedeschi. "It made no sense."

In a memo to his staff on Friday, Dan Opat, vice president of operations, wrote that the job reductions "also mean new roles and responsibilities for a number of capable people within our departments." He pointed to the March restructuring and noted the paper eliminated a press and capped total pages on certain days, but was also increasing the amount of local zoning of the paper it performs.

Jack Myers, editor and publisher of Jack Myers Media Business Report in Manhattan, said staff cuts within a month or two of a planned acquisition were not common.

"If they had too many layers of management today, why didn't they have too many layers two weeks ago?" he asked, referring to the period before the sale.

Opat in his memo said, "We made these decisions prior to the transaction."

Myers also noted that newspapers need to "reinvent themselves and find new revenue streams," and those objectives will require investment. "So the big question for Cablevision is whether it is prepared to invest in Newsday. If not," he concluded, "then cuts are going to be part of the reality into the foreseeable future."