Seven months after its new chairman called layoffs a ‘bad’ word, Lee Enterprises cuts staff

Journalists at Lee Enterprises — the chain that owns such titles as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Omaha World-Herald — are well accustomed to cuts at the end of the summer, as the company prepares for the close of its fiscal year.

But this year, some hoped that things would be different. Thanks to a $50 million deal in February, billionaire David Hoffmann had become the majority shareholder and chairman of the company. He came bearing a message of renewed investment in the chain — one he repeated in interviews, during quarterly earnings calls and in a set of profiles that ran on the front page of every Lee paper. “NEW HOPE FOR LOCAL NEWS,” the profiles called Hoffmann.

That hope shattered late last month, when Lee began laying off editors and copy editors at papers across the country.

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