Tribune Columnist Criticizes Company's Staff Cuts

By: Dave Astor Kathleen Parker, by criticizing Tribune Co. staff cuts in her Wednesday column, took aim at the firm that owns her newspaper and syndicate.

The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel/Tribune Media Services (TMS) commentator wrote that media chains such as the Tribune Co. have their reasons for laying off employees. "But to those in the trenches," she said, "cutting staff is exactly the wrong solution, more like a self-inflicted wound trending toward suicide than a remedy. By cutting newsroom staffs, the corporate suits are reducing the likelihood that papers can do what makes them necessary."

Did TMS, which distributes Parker's column to about 300 papers, have any reluctance about approving the Wednesday piece? No, replied John Twohey, the syndicate's vice president for editorial and operations. "Our columnists are free to express their opinions as they see fit," Twohey told E&P. "We're not here to alter their judgments." He added that TMS' job is to make sure a column is "factually accurate and free of other flaws."

Parker, who usually writes from a conservative perspective, also said in her column: "Newspapers serve their communities in ways that can't be replicated by bloggers -- noble-spirited, smart, and entertaining as many often are -- or by anyone else. They not only help define a given community, but also serve as both government watchdog and information conduit. They have the resources to investigate, to report, to inform as no other entity can, does, or will."

So, said Parker, "corporate honchos should be infusing newsrooms with more money to hire more staff -- especially those who give newspapers their soul, their personality, their 'thing.'"

She added that "there's no satisfactory explanation" for the Tribune Co.-owned Los Angeles Times eliminating its editorial cartoonist position after the fired Michael Ramirez departs at the end of 2005. "Cartoon and column space can be filled with syndicated material, but the human quality is diminished when a paper's own in-house voices are lost to the cost-cutting void," said Parker, noting that these voices comment on "local issues that affect readers' daily lives, not just national topics of general interest" -- and thus help readers feel connected to their newspapers.

"As corporate bean counters look for new cuts," Parker concluded, "they might consider that there's a connection between the hemorrhaging their shareholders feel and the bloodied newsrooms they're leaving behind."

Parker's mention of cartoonists got her column a link on ComicsReporter.com.