LA Times Cuts 250 Jobs; 150 Cuts in Editorial Include Online
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
The most troubled big newspaper in U.S. is cutting off 250 jobs, including an unprecedented 150 positions in editorial, to bring its expenses down in line with declining revenues.The Los Angeles Times newspaper will also reduce the number of pages it publishes each week by 15 percent, it announced on a slow Wednesday prior to July 4th holiday week. These cuts will be across all departments of The Times, including circulation, marketing and advertising, and the company will have about 3,000 employees after the reductions.
This is among the biggest such cuts announced by any major market U.S. newspaper in recent history. The editorial cuts amount to roughly 17 percent of the 876 the company employs now, will be spread between the print newsroom and The Times' online operations and are to be completed by Labor Day.
The cuts on the online side are a bit surprising, considering LATimes.com has been trying to build up its online operations with blogs, special vertical sections, search, video and other services. The Tribune owned paper has seen a lot of management turmoil over the last few years, and even since Sam Zell took over the company. As for other Tribune papers, anouncements of hundreds of reductions were issued only last week by dailies in Boston, San Jose, Detroit and elsewhere.
By Rafat Ali