The Baltimore Sun Media Group offers 45 more buyouts

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Feb 14, 2008 by Robbie Whelan

The Baltimore Sun Media Group said Wednesday that it will offer buyouts to 45 employees from a variety of different departments at the Baltimore-based newspaper. The announcement comes as The Sun's newly-established Business Development Office is actively recruiting reporters for a new print publication targeting younger readers, to be launched in April.

Sun Publisher Tim Ryan wrote in a memo to Sun employees that a drop in Baltimore-area home sales and the announcement that Macy's department stores will cut 2,500 jobs are "clear signs that our retail advertisers are ... feeling the pinch."

"Every day, media-watching websites report another newspaper or magazine that has had to reduce its staff," Ryan wrote. "The economy may not yet be in a recession, but it's clearly on the way, and in the news business, we are feeling it now."

Buyout offer packets will go out as soon as Friday, and eligible Sun employees will have two weeks to decide whether or not to apply. March 31 will be the last day of work for any Sun employee who accepts a buyout.

Linda Yurche, a Sun spokeswoman, said that it was unclear which departments the cuts would come from, but that the newsroom and the advertising department both have a large number of long-time employees.

"For somebody who may be thinking that they might be retiring in a year, they can leave now and take 40 weeks of pay with them," she said.

Yurche said she could "neither confirm nor deny" reports that the Sun is hiring reporters for a new five-day-a-week print product.

"We are going to continue to look at the way business is shifting, and to develop new products and services," she said. "Just because of the buyouts, it doesn't mean we're not going to grow in certain areas. Anything is possible."

The last round of buyouts, in June 2007, offered packages to 58 employees, and cut 17 reporters and editors from The Sun's newsroom.

The current buyout package offers participants the equivalent of one week's pay for each six months the employee has worked at The Sun, plus continued medical and pension benefits.

Bill Salganik, a Sun business reporter and president of the Baltimore-Washington Newspaper Guild, the union that represents most Sun reporters, said he has been told that fewer newsroom cuts will be made this time around.

"We certainly don't feel overstaffed," he said.

Salganik also said he has heard rumors of a new publication to be launched this year, but did not know the details.

"I don't see anything wrong with starting a new publication, but cutting journalists and customer service people ... even Sam Zell is saying that isn't a good business plan," he said, referring to the chairman and CEO of the Tribune Co., the Sun's parent company.

"The best way [to address the Sun's losses] is to get new revenue streams, a different Web product, or a different ad product on the Web," Salganik said. "It's even possible that producing a great newspaper will attract more readers and better advertisers."

Zell sent a related memo Wednesday, announcing an unspecified number of cuts within the Tribune's corporate and publishing arms.

"Unfortunately, I can't turn this ship from its course of the past 10 years within just a few months," he wrote. "Further, while I will do everything in my power to drive, pull and drag this company forward, I can't promise we won't see additional position eliminations in the future, if we continue at our current rate of cash flow decline."

The Zell-led $8.2 billion purchase of Tribune Co., which took the company private, was completed in December.

Rem Rieder, editor of the American Journalism Review, said that these buyouts are part of a trend that is not likely to abate any time soon.

"The publishing companies got very used to high profits, and when revenue went down their response is to cut back and retrench, and the result is that you're in a very competitive market with a weaker product," he said. "What's interesting in the new private companies, like the Philadelphia Inquirer, or Sam Zell at the Tribune, is that after brave words when taking over, they're taking the same approach."

Rieder also said that introducing new products, like The Sun is planning to do, is smart.

"Trying new things makes sense," he said. "Standing pat and doing nothing about it doesn't make sense."