'Pi-Press' To Cut 40 Jobs, Half in Newsroom

By: The bad news in Tuesday's St. Paul Pioneer Press will be about the paper.

Even though more people are reading it, advertising revenue is down. So publisher Par Ridder said Monday the paper will cut the equivalent of 40 full-time positions, or about 5% of the staff, through a combination of buyouts, layoffs and job eliminations.

About 20 of the cuts will come in the 205-person newsroom, where the paper hopes to find at least 10 full-time employees to take buyout packages.

"It's a tough situation in the newspaper business right now," Ridder said.

The Pioneer Press first reported the job reductions on its Web site.

Against national trends, the paper's circulation is up. But big national advertisers including carmakers and cell phone companies have pared back on newspaper ads, Ridder said, and the paper has also been scrambling to make up lost ground in classified ads.

He wouldn't provide details on the drop in ad revenue.

"When you put it in the context of how the fundamentals of the business are changing, the reductions that we announced today are on the smaller side," Ridder said.

Cuts outside the newsroom will be spread through advertising, information technology, production and circulation departments. The paper had about 800 full-time employees last year, and will have about 700 next year. The rest of the reductions have been through attrition.

The cuts were announced in an afternoon staff meeting, followed by a newsroom meeting.

Editor Thom Fladung said the mood was "somber."

Still, some employees were relieved to hear the paper was offering buyouts, said Jack Sullivan, a local news team leader and union secretary. He said they could entice midcareer journalists looking for a change and senior employees close to retirement.

"I don't want to say that anybody's relieved that we're cutting staff, but I will say that voluntary is better than involuntary," Sullivan said. "People are glad to see no one losing their job without having a choice in the matter."

The paper's 745 employees have been through a lot. Earlier this year, former owner Knight Ridder Inc. sold the Pioneer Press. It's owned by Hearst Corp. and managed by MediaNews Group Inc., which plans to acquire the paper when a financing deal is finished.

Before the change of ownership this spring, MediaNews owner William Dean Singleton assured employees that the newspaper wouldn't see any major changes from the sale. But he said he couldn't rule out layoffs.

Ridder said the job cuts were a local decision.

Fladung said the reductions won't distract the paper from its focus on local news, particularly in the east metro.

"It's not good news but we'll adjust," he said. "You adjust in part by continuing to do good journalism. That's what sells."

A bigger worry is whether ad revenue will continue to fall off.

Ridder said he doesn't know.