Casualty Lists Updated for Newspaper Industry

The New York Times is one rung of the ladder above getting a junk bond rating and a Moody's analyst says the company may need to reduce its annual dividend (which runs to $132 million annually) in order to avoid junk status.

Meanwhile, "recovering journalist" Mark Potts has compiled a useful PDF on the newspaper industry's job cuts over the past year, which he calculates totaled at least 6,311 at the nation's top 100 newspapers by circulation.

Here are the top ten:

Los Angeles Times 350
Palm Beach Post 300
Miami Herald 290
Seattle Times 286
Detroit Free Press 226
Atlanta Journal-Constitution 200
Newark Star-Ledger 200
Chicago Tribune 190
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 190
Ft. Worth Star-Telegram 171

Extending back a few years, to the round of cuts that started in 2004-'5, reveals a somewhat different list in terms of overall job cuts:

New York Times 600
Houston Chronicle 410
Los Angeles Times 350
Boston Globe 345
San Francisco Chronicle 345
Chicago Tribune 310
Dallas Morning News 301
Philadelphia Inquirer 298
Miami Herald 290
Seattle Times 286

The gloom that has settled over the newspaper industry is palpable. As all the historic sources of revenue -- display ads, classified ads, circulation and newsstand revenues -- continue to deteriorate, this decade has become the most challenging the industry has ever faced.

Every company on these lists is investing in growing their online operations, but none are yet monetizing their digital products at a scale that would begin to offset their losses.

Thus, the pink slips just keep coming. Newspaper people have always joked that their product quickly becomes tomorrow's fish wrapping, but when the top daily in the country literally faces junk-bond status, garbage jokes no longer draw the chuckles they used to.

David Weir

David Weir is a veteran journalist who has worked at Rolling Stone, California, Mother Jones, Business 2.0, SunDance, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, MyWire, 7x7, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, which he cofounded in 1977. He’s also been a content executive at KQED, Wired Digital, Salon.com, and Excite@Home. David has published hundreds of articles and three books,including "Raising Hell: How the Center for Investigative Reporting Gets Its Story," and has been teaching journalism for more than 20 years at U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and Stanford.

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