UPDATE: 'Post' Publisher, Editor, Explain Job Cuts

By: Joe Strupp The Washington Post's top Newspaper Guild leader said today the paper's plan to cut at least 80 newsroom jobs will make it tougher to cover news, especially with the Post's expanding multimedia approach. E&P first reported the cutbacks this morning.

Late this afternoon, Publisher Bo Jones distributed a memo (first posted on the Romenesko site), which reads:

"This Spring The Post is planning to offer voluntary retirement incentive programs in the News, Commercial, and Production Departments. The details of these programs are still being worked out, and we will let you know when they are finalized. They will cover certain exempt staff and certain Guild-covered employees.

"The upcoming retirement incentive programs are voluntary and will be designed to allow employees ? basically those whose functions will not have to be replaced or can be reassigned -- to retire this year with enhanced retirement benefits. They will be offered selectively, only where the newspaper can save costs. These programs do not involve layoffs.

"We've offered retirement incentive programs to employees from time to time in the past to reduce staffing when conditions warranted it. During the past year newspaper revenues have flattened while expenses ? particularly newsprint ? have continued to rise. Departments have always adjusted their staffing to meet reader needs and business conditions, as we are doing now.

"The Post is a very strong newspaper today. We will continue to approach staffing here in ways that serve the newspaper's basic goals. Those goals are to extend the quality of the newspaper's journalism, to grow readership and advertising revenues, and to help the website in ways we can."

In an article in Saturday's Washington Post, Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. said the paper is doing better, financially, than many of its competitors. "But it is obvious that a significant change is taking place in our readership, with a sizable portion of it migrating to the Internet," he said.

The article continued: "Other cost-cutting measures include closing several offices that Post foreign correspondents use overseas and eliminating assistant positions in some of those bureaus. With laptop computers and satellite and cellular phones, many correspondents can work out of their homes, Downie said, and the newspaper is pushing correspondents to cover wider areas and become less fixed to offices. He added that The Post does not plan to eliminate any of its 18 foreign bureaus....

"Locally, Downie said The Post is rethinking its suburban weekly Extra sections in some counties. He said the newspaper is considering merging the Howard and Anne Arundel County Extras and remaking The Post's Metro coverage to include more local stories in the zoned sections daily, instead of weekly."

Earlier in the day, a guild leader had expressed worries.

"One concern is that the fewer of us there are, the harder it is to accomplish the core mission of reporting and writing the tough, accountability story," said Rick Weiss, co-chair of the Post's unit of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, which represents about 600 of the paper's 800 newsroom staffers. "It is going to have a negative impact on the quantity and quality of journalism we can do."

But the Post's effort in recent years to expand Web content, television and cable appearances, and a new deal with a local radio station to provide content will affect the job-cutting impact even more, Weiss said.

"There is also a concern about the multimedia newsroom and the expectation that we will all be increasingly contributing to TV, radio, and the Web site," Weiss, a science reporter, added. "My concern there is that all of these platforms are derivatives of the newsroom. They are rehashing the news that we are generating as reporters."

Weiss' comments followed reports that the paper planned to cut at least 80 editorial jobs through attrition and buyouts, but likely with no layoffs, during the next year. Editors began revealing those plans in meetings with news departments on Thursday, which continued today. Weiss said the buyout offers would be similar to those made about two years ago that resulted in 55 newsroom staffers leaving, but had yet to receive specific information.

"Some of it will be from not filling slots that are vacant and [cutting] some part-timers, especially copy editors," Weiss revealed after attending a meeting of newsroom employees this morning with Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr and other editors. "Len said there will be no layoffs, so it is not the kind of bad news other papers are getting."

Other cost savings also being discussed at the meetings included likely travel cutbacks and foreign-bureau spending reductions, but little if any impact on Iraq War coverage.

Weiss believed Downie, Jones, and Donald Graham, chairman of The Washington Post Co., remained committed to good journalism and described their approach as better than many other newspaper companies. "I believe they actually care about journalism as much as they care about the bottom line," he said. "They are not motivated by demands for unrealistic profit margins."

Still, Weiss stressed the impact that having to serve so many media outlets, from web to radio, will have on staffers once the cuts are made. "The more time I spend blogging, doing radio shows and TV spots, the less time I have to generate the news that everyone wants," he said. "They are counting on reporters, editors and columnists to fill a lot of airtime."