Layoffs hit the Pioneer Press, Star Tribune newsrooms

Well, the STRIB has declared bankruptcy but is still printing. Seven people were laid off from the Star Tribune newsroom Friday, with the possibility of six being hired back if anyone else in the newsroom reconsiders and takes the buyout offer, the gossip train calls a pretty meager package. Fat chance.

Layoffs hit the Pioneer Press on Friday, as well. This is the first time my sources can recall the PiPress laying off full-time newsroom staffers. In the past, they've offered voluntary contract buy-outs, reduced their part-time and on-call staff. This is new.

Here's the memo that circulated Friday from the top brass:


Fellow staffers:
We've taken steps this week in reaction to the severe economic downturn and in anticipation of a very challenging 2009 -- including Friday's layoff of four newsroom colleagues.

The layoffs included:

--- Picture editor Randy Johnson

--- Clerk Tom Morley

--- Web producer John Vincent

--- Sports copy editor Tim Whitecotton

Additionally, Cindy Larson, one of our newsroom clerks, and Dick Klitsch, who worked on our sports copy desk, will be moving to the ad production department.

We also eliminated the budget for on-call help on the sports copy desk, most directly affecting five regular on-call contributors: Kyle Anway, Brad Perlich, Travis Petschl, Alexandra Pluym and Val Reichel.

I thank them all. We will miss them and their daily contributions to the work we all do.

I made these moves reluctantly -- but also knowing that I had to, given the immediate and near-future outlook for the economy. My overriding goal was to protect our reporting power. Our ability to continue to produce distinctive journalism that can't be found anywhere else is more important now than it has ever been. And we must produce that work for our online operations, daily newspaper and niche publications.

Towards that end, we're making some other changes. We'll be merging the operations of the news and sports copy desks, to more widely share the load and increase how efficiently we move copy. To help do so, we'll be rearranging desks and asking lots of people to move, including photo and the hub and sports desk staffers on the 6th floor. We'll be moving desks on Monday morning.

What can we all be doing, right here and right now, to help? Journalism. Break exclusive news online and in print. Tell stories that can't be found anywhere else. Find photos that jump off the page and videos that must be watched. Design dynamic illustrations and pages. Write headlines that demand to be read.

Thanks. As always, I'm here for questions. --

Could the Pioneer Press buy the Star Tribune?

Dean Singleton, the owner of the Media News Group (the Denver-based company that bought the Pioneer Press after Knight Ridder dissolved) has made a career of buying papers in crisis, gutting their staffs, and then cracking the whip. It's publish or perish.

It's a strategy that has supposedly made Singleton a multi-millionaire. Or is that billionaire?

For years, the talk was that the Star Tribune would oneday absorb the Pioneer Press, a stalwart underdog in one of the last great media rivalries in the United States of America.

But if the Avista Corp., which bought the Star Tribune not long ago and has no great love of media holdings, is doing as poorly financially as it claims to be, perhaps things could go the other way around?

City Pages ponders the possibility and dishes on the Star Tribune's meager finances here, as the New York Post did before it:

City Pages article on the Star Tribune

Singleton could, in theory, ride in and buy the Star Tribune, and either merge the two papers or create a joint operating agreement of sorts. Shared content. Shared printing presses. But separate identities, each capitalizing on the loyal fan base for each paper in each city.

A group of eight rival newspapers in Ohio just did something along a similar vein here, sharing content between them as an answer to the Associated Press rate hike:

More on the operating agreement-style parternship here:
Ohio papers share content