By: E&P Staff and The Associated Press Among those leaving the Chicago Tribune in buyouts/layoffs announced Friday are three top editors, among the first exits related to cost-trimming at the Tribune Company's flagship.
The staff reductions announced Friday are a mix of voluntary and involuntary departures, says Tribune spokesman Michael Dizon, who declined to release numbers.
A blog post by Tribune columnist Manya Brachear gives more than 20 names of employees leaving and called Friday "the saddest day yet."
The three editors requested and received buyouts. They are: Hanke Gratteau , managing editor for news, public editor Timothy J. McNulty and Washington bureau chief Michael Tackett.
Tribune is cutting costs to offset declines in advertising and circulation revenue that have sharpened this year for most newspapers.
Dizon says most of the staff members leaving Friday "expressed willingness to do so."
The Tribune said last month it expected to eliminate about 80 newsroom positions in this round of cuts, the paper's fourth in three years, "and an undetermined number of involuntary departures remain," the paper related today.
Gerould Kern, the new Tribunes editor, said in a staff memo that the paper is "in the process of evaluating the scope of these reductions."
Kern thanked those leaving the newsroom, citing in the cases of Gratteau, McNulty and Tackett their "grace and consummate professionalism" in difficult times.
In an interview for a Tribune blog, Randy Michaels, chief operating officer, said, "?We are not running a museum. We are running a business in a time of increased competition and economic hardship. We should grieve for those who have been downsized. We should NOT be mourning the loss of anything else.?
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