More Lee Layoffs in Montana, at the Gazette in Billings
By Robert Struckman, 9-09-08
Luella Brien, a reporter at the Billings Gazette with nearly two years experience at the paper, was the latest journalist laid off in the state, thanks to cutbacks at Lee Enterprises, which owns four daily newspapers in Montana. The Gazette laid off another employee last week.
Managers asked Brien not to say anything to her coworkers that she was leaving, she said. The paper has also ceased publishing its Heights edition, geared toward the sprawling neighborhoods along Billings’ north and east borders.
“I posted it on Facebook,” Brien said with her characteristic vigor. “I’m not surprised, but I am surprised that it came this late,” she said, referring both to the cutting of her position and of the section.
Layoffs at the Missoulian two weeks ago and at the five-day-a-week Ravalli Republic last week have cut back reporting positions at Lee newspapers in the state by as much as 10 percent, depending on whether you’re talking about all newsroom personnel or just bylines.
Lee Enterprises, whose stock has plummeted from more than $40 a share about three years ago to less than $4 a share lately, has been struggling under a $1.3 billion debt load from the highly leveraged purchase of the Pulitzer chain of newspapers, even as revenues have plummeted and operating costs have jumped. Paper costs, driven up in part by high fuel prices, have gone through the roof.
High-level Lee sources in Montana differ on whether the layoffs reflect a sea-change in the industry or are a temporary dip which will reverse when the regional and national economies pull out of the present downturn.
Those watching the newspaper industry nationally have no such qualms about the changes happening in newspapers. Almost every day newspapers across the country announce layoffs and other cost-cutting measures as the industry reels from high costs, low ad revenues and increased competition from low-cost, Internet-based news outlets (such as NewWest.Net).
If you’re interested in more news on the subject, try this blog: papercuts.
As for Brien, she hopes to remain in Billings, one way or another.
“My dad’s voice kept ringing in my head: ‘You can’t leave your job unless you have another,’” Brien said. “I feel bad because I don’t have a job lined up, but they’re the ones who got their budget out of wack,” she added.
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At some Gannett papers, the latest round of layoffs (within the past month) seems to have been focused on senior editors and department heads with years, even decades, of service to the newspaper.
And Swift's massacre earlier this year among the upper and mid-level management of the newspapers and Web sites of the Sierra Nevada Media Group also laid off many employees who had been with the company for a long, long time, only to then advertise for new people to fill those positions, one supposes at a significantly lower salary.
Tough times.