Hard Times Across the Board

In case you have not been having enough fun following the ongoing mortgage mess, the energy crisis, and the collapse of the dollar, you really should put some time in like I do, gathering data about the newspaper industry.

Let’s consider this week’s carnage:

• Gannett reported a 36.3 percent drop in profits for Q-2, and Wall Street knocked 4.5 percent off its share value. (Have you ever noticed that the stock exchange acts like a bully, kicking guys when they are down?)

• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced that it will be cutting 184 jobs, or eight percent of its workforce, through a combination of voluntary buyouts, layoffs, and “job eliminations.”  (I guess the last means laying off both the worker and the job.)

• The Santa Rosa Press Democrat laid off 5 percent of its staff.

•  After the Baltimore Sun said it would reduce its payroll by 60, only 34 staffers applied for buyouts, leaving 26 others to be laid off. The sixty are to find out their fates starting this Friday.

• Analyst Alan Mutter reported  that newspaper shares lost nearly $4 billion in value during the first 10 trading days in July.

• Investigative reporter Chuck Phillips, whose story  erroneously linking  Sean Combs  to an attack on  Tupac Shakur  was retracted by the Los Angeles Times, said he is taking a buyout, along with other veterans.

• And, just in case you missed it, earlier this week both Chicago Tribune editor  Ann Marie Lipinski and Los Angeles Times publisher David Hiller announced their resignations in the continuing bloodshed at Tribune Co., since real state tycoon Sam Zell took over.

Now there is one (and only one) amusing tidbit to report.  The New York Post and the New York Daily News , owned by bitter rivals Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman, are reportedly discussing merging their print and distribution operations, among with some other business functions.

Hard times, one would suppose, makes for strange bedfellows….