Loss of 'Trib' Contract Likely to Cost Jobs in Champaign

By: E&P Staff On Friday The News-Gazette, Champaign, Ill., said it would have to cut costs, probably including jobs, owing to the Chicago Tribune decision to print all its editions in Chicago.

The News-Gazette has printed the Tribune's downstate distribution for about 25 years. But to cut costs, the Tribune has chosen to print at its Freedom Center instead of at newspapers in Champaign and Madison, Wis. (E&P Online, Feb 8).

When Tribune printing ends in Champaign on April 26, so will seven of 24 pressroom jobs, the News-Gazette's Don Dobson reported.

In a companywide meeting last Thursday, Publisher John R. Foreman said all departments probably would be affected by loss of the $2 million printing contract.

In Friday's account in the News-Gazette, Foreman said the contract represented a smaller portion of overall revenue than that supplied by newspaper ads, circulation, the company's broadcast outlets or its weekly newspapers. Foreman said some discretionary spending already had been reduced, and the paper would look for other revenue sources. Nevertheless, the publisher said salaries and benefits -- which account for roughly 75% of expenditures -- would have to be cut.

"I don't know how deep we will have to go," Dobson quoted Foreman saying.

Company ownership was transferred five years ago to a private foundation that supports the Community Foundation of East Central Illinois and the University of Illinois Foundation (E&P, Feb 10, 2003). With 302 full- and 126 part-time employees, it will rely on attrition and buy-outs before resorting the layoffs, according to Foreman, who said he did not think the number would be large.

Without the Tribune contract, the News-Gazette will have greater flexibility in its own production. The paper noted, for example, that production of the Tribune prevented the News-Gazette from switching to morning publication. The paper prints its Vermilion County edition in the early morning, after the Tribune is printed. It then prints the Daily Illini university paper before printing its own late-morning and early-afternoon editions for the Champaign-Urbana-Savoy area and outlying regions.

"Having three editions is not the most efficient way to run a newspaper," Foreman told his paper.

But Foreman also called loss of the contract "a setback for our new distribution facility," where the News-Gazette planned to eventually set up a new press hall (E&P, Oct. 2007).