Houston, Spokane Papers Announce New Staff Cuts

By: E&P Staff and The Associated Press The Spokesman-Review newspaper plans to lay off about 30 employees and has also offered early retirement incentives, the publisher says. The Houston Chronicle, meanwhile, announced a five percent cut in work force.

Several years of flat revenues, including advertising and circulation sales, are prompting the Spokane cutbacks as costs continue to rise at the rate of inflation, Publisher W. Stacey Cowles said Monday, adding he anticipated a combination of layoffs and retirements would eliminate about 40 jobs in all.

Editor Steven A. Smith said he has been asked to trim more than $1 million from a newsroom budget of more than $9 million. Of the company's 550 employees, about 137 work in the newsroom.

The layoffs and early retirements will affect 10 to 15 journalists who write, photograph, edit and design the newspaper for salaries averaging between $45,000 and $55,000 a year, Smith said.

Cowles also seeks layoffs in the circulation, marketing and prepress departments.

In a staff memo, the publisher said the newspaper's best advertisers are losing the competition against companies that do not buy newspaper ads.

"Our best advertisers must compete against a huge number of stores and Web sites that do not advertise much if at all ... And when they lose sales, they cut their advertising with us," Cowles said.

"We're in a transition," he said, though "we're unsure where it is to."

The announcement, posted Monday on the newspaper's Web site, came a day before management and the Spokane Editorial Society, a bargaining unit representing about 100 hourly wage journalists and support staff, begin wage negotiations for 2008.

The news from Houston emerged in a memo to employees from Publisher Jack Sweeney on Monday. The memo was first posted at the Romenesko site at www.poynter.org. It follows.
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In this complex and competitive information and media environment, with consumer choices multiplying daily, our new strategic plan calls for more resources to be dedicated to new technology and product development. We need to operate differently, and at less cost, as we continue to build our line-up of products to capture more audience and ad revenue market share.

That, coupled with a downturn in our financial performance over the past five years, plus an '08 budget projection with another drop in revenue, sets the stage for a reorganization and, unfortunately, a position-elimination program.

A staff reduction in the five percent range, through layoffs and the elimination of open positions, is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday Oct. 29-30. If you have any questions regarding this program, I encourage you to contact our Human Resources Department.