Plain Dealer Dealing Less to Clevelanders; Massive Layoffs & Reduced Home Delivery

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Cleveland, Ohio's second largest city and the nation's 45th largest city, deserves better.

New York-based Advance Publications yesterday pink-slipped 50 newsroom employees at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, one-third of its editorial workforce, as the daily prepares next week to reduce home delivery to four days a week, according to reports by the Associated Press and Crain's Cleveland Business.

Last year, the Plain Dealer slashed its newsroom personnel by a third, from 168 to 110 employees (see "TUOL" post 12/7/12). Business Editor Randy Roguski was among the Newspaper Guild member photogs, page designers and reporters who received a fateful phone call yesterday cutting them loose. The paper plans to publish a six-page supplement this Sunday outlining proposed changes, according to Crain's.

Among those changes will be home delivery of the paper only on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Some of the staffers laid off may re-apply for jobs with the Northeast Ohio Media Group, a new digital-emphasizing entity responsible for providing content for Cleveland.com and for handling the Plain Dealer's marketing and ad sales.

The AP article reports the Plain Dealer's weekday circulation is roughly 286,000.

Star-Ledger Gives a N.J. 'Or Else' Ultimatum to Unions

Unless it exacts more than $9 million in concessions from unions, Advance Publications-owned The (Newark) Star-Ledger, the Garden State's largest newspaper and the nation's 16th largest daily, will cease publication by the end of 2013, Publisher Richard Vezza warned staffers in a letter this week.

Vezza said the Star-Ledger expects at least to match last year's $19.8 million in losses in 2013. His letter sets a Sept. 27 deadline to reach a settlement with unions that would involve their giving up the roughly $9 million the daily claims it could bank through outsourcing. Blaming sagging ad revenues and declining circulation that have plagued newspapers industry-wide, as well as the unique devastation wreaked on the N.J. economy by Hurricane Sandy, the Star-Ledger earlier this year shrank its newsroom workforce by 10 percent by slashing 34 jobs (see "TUOL" post 1/18/13).

Advance Publications is privately held by the Newhouse family and is not required to disclose publicly its earnings figures. The Star-Ledger (the household paper with which the devoted staff of "TUOL" grew up) has a daily circulation of more than 340,000, 160,000 of whom are digital subscribers, and a Sunday readership of more than 432,000, 140,000 of those being online viewers.

Management previously employed The Sopranos-like "or else" negotiating tactics in 2008 to win buyouts and concessions from drivers and mailers unions in 2008. Editorial staffers in the Star-Ledger newsroom are not unionized.

Oregonian Reportedly Slashes Quarter of Its Staff; Reduces Home Delivery

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Ninety-five employees, including 45 newsroom staffers, are being pink-slipped at the Advance Publications, Inc.-owned The Oregonian, according to a report by Willamette Week. The layoffs amount to nearly 25 percent of the newsroom's 175 employees.

Among those who lost their jobs are environmental reporter Scott Learn, home & gardens writer Bridget Otto and editorial columnist David Sarasohn, according to the Willamette Week article. The Oregonian is shifting its emphasis to its digital edition, paring back home delivery of its paper version to four days a week--Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Reportedly, Oregonian Publisher N. Christian Anderson informed staffers in a letter that as of October 1, the company will launch Oregonian Media Group ("OMG") to handle print and digital content, along with marketing, while another entity, Advance Central Services Oregon, will oversee human resources, IT, production, distribution and finance for OMG.

Advance Publications Still in Retreat

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After slashing 20 jobs last January, the Advance Publications-owned (Easton, Pa.) Express-Times has eliminated another dozen full-time slots, the Associated Press reports.

The daily's Publisher and President, Lou Stancampiano, relayed the discouraging news comes as the paper eliminates its production department, shifting the printing duties to the Staten Island Advance, which will truck the daily to the Express-Times facility. The paper will continue to publish daily for now, Stancampiano confirmed.

The Newhouse family-owned Advance Publications newspapers, including the (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger, went through a round of massive layoffs in January in the face of withering circulation and shrinking ad revenues (see "TUOL" post 1/18/13).

Fading Star-Ledger

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 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thirty-four newsroom jobs evaporated at The (Newark) Star-Ledger yesterday, as the Advance Publications-owned daily shed 10 percent of its workforce, according to accounts by the Star-Ledger and Associated Press.

The ravages of Superstorm Sandy joined declining circulation and plunging ad revenues on the usual laundry list of reasons for the massive job reduction. Although the pink slips were distributed among the IT,  circulation and advertising departments, the shockwaves were strongest in the newsroom, where 18 employees were ousted, including copy editors, photographers, news and photo editors.

The Star-Ledger, the nation's 16th largest daily with a combined digital and print readership of 311,904, according to the Alliance for Audited Media, has seen its newsroom shrink to 175 from 195. "TUOL" has chronicled the ongoing financial hardship of the Star-Ledger (see "TUOL" post 7/13/12), which included a massive buyout in 2008 in which 304 workers, including 151 newsroom staffers, took the money and ran.

Star-Ledger publisher Richard Vezza, in an understatement, called yesterday a "difficult day," while Editor Kevin Whitmer acknowledged the daily was unable to continue to support certain positions on the paper.
Terminated staffers were given a week-and-a-half severance pay for each year of service to a maximum 26 weeks and provided health care and job counseling during that period.

The Newhouse family-owned Advance Publications wielded the job axe at other chain publications yesterday, including The Express-Times in Easton, Pennsylvania, which trimmed 12 jobs from its 234-member staff, and the South Jersey Times, which employed 150 before 11 workers were sent packing.

According to the AP account, the Star-Ledger is the largest content provider to the free NJ.com Web site, which draws from Advance-owned dailies and weeklies. The Star-Ledger is a non-union shop.

The layoffs resonated among the devoted New Jersey-born staff of "TUOL," which turned to the Star-Ledger after the afternoon daily Newark Evening News folded, and read the paper throughout middle school and high school.

Cleveland Journos Deal with Plain Truth: Cuts Loom

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A crippling decrease in advertising revenue underlies massive cuts planned at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which may see the Advance Publications-owned daily's workforce reduced by one-third from 168 to 110, beginning in May 2013.

Crain's Cleveland Business this week reported that the Newspaper Guild chapter that represents the daily was told by management that the staff shrinkage would be accomplished through pink slips and job offers from Cleveland.com, which operates the daily's Web site. The Crain's article indicated that the Plain Dealer may follow the path of other Advance-owned dailies, such as the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and reduce its publishing schedule to thrice weekly, on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

The Plain Dealer's staff size presently is frozen by a contractual agreement that expires January 31.

Newhouses Advance on Trimming Dailies to Tri-Weeklies

The Star-Ledger (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Newhouse family-owned Advance Publications is embracing the model that converts daily newspapers to thrice-weekly publications, with The Syracuse Post Standard next in line and several northeastern papers in peril, The New York Post "Media Ink" column reports.

Beginning January 1, 2013, a new entity, the Syracuse Media Group, will oversee Syracuse.com and a Post Standard that will publish Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, according to the Media Ink column. The Newhouse media conglomerate would not confirm whether a similar fate awaits some of its Northeast dailies, including the (Newark) Star Ledger, Trenton Times, Jersey Journal and Staten Island Advance. Entrenched Star Ledger  union contracts with pressmen and truckers may slow, but not stop, the three-times-the-charm publishing juggurnaut.

The Star Ledger was "TUOL"'s morning read during the devoted staff's formative middle school and high school years, so stay tuned for updates on whether the Ledger will suffer the same fate as the New Orleans Times Picayune.

'Bought Out' Journalist Sues Paper for Fraud

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)Advance Publications-owned The Star-Ledger has been sued by former deputy business editor and Essex County (N.J.) Bureau Chief Philip Read for fraud, breach of contract and breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing concerning his 2010 buyout, Romanesko.com reports.

Read, who joined the daily as deputy business editor in 1997, alleges that he was misled into accepting the voluntary buyout by purportedly being told editorial staffers would be pink-slipped if the paper didn't realize $10 million in savings, according to his complaint. As Bureau Chief, he was earning $109,000 in 2008 when he purportedly received memoranda from the Star-Ledger citing declining advertising revenues as the impetus for the daily needing 200 employees to accept buyouts.

According to his complaint, Read was told he would likely be laid off if he didn't take the buyout. He alleges the Star-Ledger did not achieve the $10 million cost reduction goal, yet did not layoff staff. (Disclosure: the tireless staff of "TUOL" grew up reading The Star Ledger once The Newark Evening News figuratively and literally folded.)

UPDATE: Judge No Longer 'Suits' Plain Dealer

Image via WikipediaCuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold and her daughter have ended their invasion of privacy suit against Advance Internet, an affiliate of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, over the publisher's Internet "outing" of pseudonymous comments by Saffold's daughter from the judge's computer regarding an ongoing murder trial. (See "TUOL" posts 4/8/10 & 3/26/10).

Associated Press reports that the judge reached an undisclosed financial settlement of a $50 million suit filed after the publication identified anonymous comments posted by lawmiss. Several of the comments traced to Judge Saffold's computer concerned Anthony Sowell, who is accused of the serial killing of 11 women.The resolution purportedly involves a charitable donation made by Advance on the judge's behalf.

UPDATE: Judge & Daughter Sue Plain Dealer for Outing Anonymous Posts

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Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold and her daughter Sydney Saffold have filed a $50 million suit against Advance Publications, owner of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, alleging the media defendant conspired to violate the privacy policy of its Web site, www.cleveland.com, by identifying anonymous comments by "lawmiss," a user name linked to the plaintiffs (see "TUOL" post 3/26/10).

The suit, which was filed in Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, accuses the media defendant of engaging in a "vendetta" in its quest to identify the users of the registered "lawmiss" cleveland.com account after one anonymous posting questioned the mental health of Plain Dealer reporter James Ewinger's relative. Sydney Saffold has acknowledged writing some of the anonymous comments under the "lawmiss" moniker, but her mother the Judge has denied authoring comments.  The Plain Dealer claims a handful of "lawmiss"'s comments concern cases over which the judge  has presided.

A Plain Dealer affiliate, Advance Internet, created cleveland.com's privacy policy, which states in part: "We reserve the right to use the information we collect about your computer, which may at times be able to identify you, for any lawful business purpose." Plaintiffs' counsel concedes that Judge Saffold and her daughter share the "lawmiss" account, but claims the AOL Email address linked to the account was established by Judge Saffold's former husband for the entire family's use.

Apparently, the plaintiffs' ardor for preserving Internet blogger anonymity only goes so far; the Complaint seeks to unmask "John Does" who criticized the judge in online comments and has named the "Does" as defendants. "TUOL" does not believe that the old adage attributed to politicians that "no publicity is bad publicity," does not extend to jurists.

New Yorker Mag Faces $45m Libel Suit from New Guinea Tribesmen

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Two tribesmen from the Independent State of Papua New Guinea have filed an amended 30-page defamation lawsuit against the publisher of The New Yorker and the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of  the article "Vengeance is Ours," that appeared in the magazine in April 2008, according to Forbes Magazine.

The amended complaint, filed in the New York Supreme Court by attorney Jack Litman, who represented "Preppie Murder" defendant Robert Chambers, seeks $45 million in damages, and cites 24 allegedly false passages in the article that purportedly defame the plaintiffs.The case is Henep Isum Mandingo & Hup Daniel Wemp v. Advance Publications, Inc. & Jared Diamond (Case No. 09-105519).

The complaint contends that the magazine failed to fact-check the article about events that allegedly transpired in the nation that is part of Oceania, though The New Yorker counters that an editorial staffer vigorously fact-checked Diamond's account.  According to the complaint, Diamond's article alludes to a three-year-long clan war that killed 30 and purportedly was sparked by the presence of a pig in a garden, while the complaint alleges only four people died in the three-month long struggle that was caused by a card game.

Wemp & Mandingo allege the article falsely portrays them as sanctioning prostitution, encouraging rape, and being complicit in several murders, which the plaintiffs claim has made them targets of anger from their fellow tribesmen and prevented them from attaining gainful employment.

The defendants denied the allegations against them in their Answer to the Original Complaint.  Unfortunately for the defendants, Papua New Guinea abolished sea shells as its official currency in 1933, so were Wemp and Mandingo to prevail, it will cost Tne New Yorker several million "clams."

Foodie Fiasco: Conde Nast Kills Gourmet Magazine

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Gourmet, America's oldest food magazine, dating back to 1941, will cease publishing before the end of 2009, Conde Nast has announced.

Gourmet joins other high-end Conde Nast periodicals on the chopping block, including Modern Bride, Elegant Bride, and Cookie (a parenting journal, not a nickname for "skanky bride"). Conde Nast, which will continue to publish 19 magazines, including Bon Appetit, is part of the privately held Advance Publications media empire that includes newspapers, cable television stations, news services and the Fairchild business publications.

Although Gourmet still boasted a healthy circulation of roughly 980,000, according to the Publishers Information Bureau, its advertising pages plunged more than 50 percent in the second quarter of 2009, compared to the same period last year. No word on the fate of Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl, though a combined 180 editorial jobs will be lost with the closure of the four magazines.

Gourmet recipes will still turn up on the Epicurious.com Web site, which is little solace for "TUOL," which will probably wind up dumping its arugula and balsamic vinegar supply down the disposal.