What does that mean for Philly Papers and Do People Really Care?
Killer article in the Wall Street Journal. Is this the reason for rumor central working overtime over the impending demise of the people paper? Rumors are still running rampant about the Daily News, and it has nothing to do with Stu Bykofsky's consistently snarky jabs at blogs......
One final word before we share the Wall Street Journal article: It will be a DAMN SHAME if the people of the greater Philadelphia area let their papers go without a fight. In Philly, we're reputed to be scrappers...but can we care enough to save our papers? We should.
Here's the article:
Knight Ridder May Cut Benefits, Jobs, Size of Papers
By DENNIS K. BERMAN and JOSEPH T. HALLINAN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 24, 2006; Page A2
Excerpt:
Job cuts, benefit reductions, and reduced newspaper sizes are part of a plan to improve margins by as much as $150 million a year at newspaper chain Knight Ridder Inc., according to people familiar with presentations management has been making to potential buyers.The country's second-largest newspaper chain put itself on the block late last year, under pressure from its biggest shareholders. Now the company's top executives -- including namesake heir Tony Ridder -- are laying out their vision of the company's financial future to a group of private-equity and newspaper-industry suitors.
...One question sure to be hanging over the process is how these financial changes may affect the quality of journalism at the publisher of such venerable titles as the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Charlotte Observer and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Some of the company's 18,000 employees, 28% of whom are represented by unions, have discussed their own buyout plan.
....Knight Ridder's largest paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, has already been through a number of cuts and shouldn't be required to sustain any more, says Henry J. Holcomb, president of the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, which represents about 1,000 employees at the Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News.
"The paper is down to a number that is smaller than when I arrived," says Mr. Holcomb, a business writer who joined the Inquirer in 1983. "There has been no in-house study that says we can do more with any less. This is just manipulating numbers." (Full text)
***Write to Dennis K. Berman at dennis.berman@wsj.com and Joseph T. Hallinan at joe.hallinan@wsj.com
And here's a great gem from a site new to us on the same topic:
Scandalology 101
by Patricia Goldsmith
"... The entire Knight-Ridder chain, which includes the Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Miami Herald, is allegedly facing sale because of irritation in some quarters with the negative stories they’ve been breaking. The feeling on the right seems to be if you don’t like the news, buy a paper and change it. ... (full text)
