Casualty Lists Updated for Newspaper Industry

The New York Times is one rung of the ladder above getting a junk bond rating and a Moody’s analyst says the company may need to reduce its annual dividend (which runs to $132 million annually) in order to avoid junk status.

Meanwhile, “recovering journalist” Mark Potts has compiled a useful PDF on the newspaper industry’s job cuts over the past year, which he calculates totaled at least 6,311 at the nation’s top 100 newspapers by circulation.

Here are the top ten:

• Los Angeles Times                      350
• Palm Beach Post                          300
• Miami Herald                               290
• Seattle Times                                286
• Detroit Free Press                        226
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution    200
• Newark Star-Ledger                    200
• Chicago Tribune                           190
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel      190
• Ft. Worth Star-Telegram            171

Extending back a few years, to the round of cuts that started in 2004-’5, reveals a somewhat different list in terms of overall job cuts:

• New York Times                600
• Houston Chronicle            410
• Los Angeles Times            350
• Boston Globe                      345
• San Francisco Chronicle   345
• Chicago Tribune                 310
• Dallas Morning News        301
• Philadelphia Inquirer        298
• Miami Herald                      290
• Seattle Times                       286

The gloom that has settled over the newspaper industry is palpable. As all the historic sources of revenue — display ads, classified ads, circulation and newsstand revenues — continue to deteriorate, this decade has become the most challenging the industry has ever faced.

Every company on these lists is investing in growing their online operations, but none are yet monetizing their digital products at a scale that would begin to offset their losses.

Thus, the pink slips just keep coming. Newspaper people have always joked that their product quickly becomes tomorrow’s fish wrapping, but when the top daily in the country literally faces junk-bond status, garbage jokes no longer draw the chuckles they used to.