The week starts with some big, not at all encouraging, Chicago newspaper news
This Monday, we got not one, but two major bits of Chicago newspaper company news.
First of all, Tribune Publishing announced a buyout program in an effort to cut staff all across its newspapers. The move has been expected for a while, so it comes less as a shock and more of... well, whatever sensation one may feel when the Sword of Damocles finally drops. According to Poynter, the company is hoping to get rid of a total of 80 positions. 50 of them will be in Los Angeles Times, the company's largest, most profitable newspaper. The fact that Tribune recently fired LA Times' publisher who resisted cuts is definitely not a coincidence.
(If you are wondering why Tribune would be cutting workforce from its biggest asset - to make a long story short, the company's strategy seems to be to try to cut expenses and consolidate functions as much as possible across the board, with many of those functions moved to Chicago. As I've written before, Tribune Publishing as a whole is still profitable - but those margins have been sustained through staff and other cuts. Ousted publisher Austin Beutner, on the other hand, argued that the best way to get more people to read the paper was to actually invest in it and grow it, even if it hurts profit margins on the short run.)
We don't know which of the remaining 30 positions will be cut from Chicago Tribune and other Chicago Tribune Media Group newspapers, but there will be some. And since, blacklisting or no blacklisting, there are still plenty of people here whom I genuinely like and root for, I await those details with trepidation.
Whet Moser, the associate editor at the Tribune-owned Chicago magazine, put the whole thing in perspective by pointing out that the move comes five months after Tribune Publishing executives received bonuses, in spite of profits coming up short of expectations.
[Tribune Publishing CEO Jack Griffin], who started with Tribune Publishing in April 2014, received a prorated $713,000 of his annual $1 million base salary. His compensation also included stock and option awards, a bonus and a management incentive award.
Tribune Publishing came up about $2 million short of its earnings goal last year, which was an adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $212.5 million. Griffin received a management incentive award of $357,534 pegged to earnings, and another $357,534 in the form of a corporate initiative award for his role in the spinoff from Tribune Media.
Tony Hunter, publisher and CEO of the Chicago Tribune Media Group, earned $2.15 million in 2014, including a $500,000 retention bonus. The total also includes a $625,000 management incentive award after the Chicago Tribune surpassed its target earnings goal with an adjusted EBITDA of $89 million.
Speaking of newspaper company CEOs, Wrapports CEO Timothy Knight left the company to join Northeast Ohio Media Group, a branch of Advance Publishing (most infamously, owners of News Orleans Times-Picayune) and an online sibling of Cleveland Plain Dealer and the suburban Sun newspapers. NEOMG's relationship with the newspapers is, to put it charitably, complicated. To try summarize the parts of it your average reader is probably going to care about, NEOMG has been an online face of all of Advance Publishing's Cleveland-area media properties. The cleveland.com website posts articles from the newspapers, but most of the content comes from its own, online-only reporters - and those pieces have gained notoriety for being sensationalist and not as well researched as the newspaper articles. NEOMG's handling of the shooting of Tamir Rice is one of the more infamous examples.
Oh, and some of the NEOMG articles wind up going into print newspapers, which means that, when it screws up, it taints Plain Dealer and the Sun newspapers by association. You can see how this might upset a few people.
I don't think anybody would really miss Timothy Night. As Robert Feder pointed out, the man left quite a legacy at what's left of Sun-Times Media
Knight was instrumental in some of the most controversial and unpopular moves at the Sun-Times, including the firing of the newspaper’s entire photography staff and the elimination of all endorsements of political candidates by the editorial board. Under pressure, both moves later were scaled back.
And, perhaps most importantly, as Feder also pointed out, the man said he had a plan to save Sun-Times Media, but none of them really worked out. (One of those days, I'm going to put together a list of all the Wrapports initiatives that were thrown around and discarded months later)
On one hand, I'm kind of glad Timothy Knight is not in Chicago. On the other hand, given what the Advance's Cleveland properties have already been through...
Dear staff of @ThePlainDealer, @NEO_MediaGroup and the Sun Newspapers - we are so, so sorry. https://t.co/mg3NoER9Sg
- Strannik (@Strannik_REB45) October 5, 2015
On the third hand - Michael Ferro is still at Wrapports, and that doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
All and all, I can see why Tal Rosenberg, digital editor at Wrapports-owned Chicago Reader summed up today's news thusly.
Today in Chicago media. pic.twitter.com/jiBHQQWr9Z
- Tal Rosenberg (@talrosenberg) October 5, 2015
God help us all..