17% of Miami Herald’s staff will be laid off. Publisher David Landsberg said in a memo to staffers today the cuts are taking place at all levels of the company. The layoffs include 190 full-time and part-time employees along with the elimination of other open positions. Some will be laid off while other employees will have an option for severance packages:
Although many of these job eliminations will occur through involuntary layoffs, there also will be opportunities for employees to voluntarily elect a severance package where reductions are occurring in workgroups of two or more employees. If enough employees do not take the voluntary option, then the workgroups will be reduced to least tenure.
The McClatchy Company which owns The Miami Herald is laying off about 1400 people at all newspapers it owns in a bid to save money. Altogether the company estimates the savings will be about $70 million a year.
In April of this year the Miami Herald reported their circulation dropped 11.7% to 240,223 copies
This is extremely sad news. For all its flaws, the Miami Herald has always been a great newspaper. It has won many Pulitzer Prizes and broken countless stories of national importance. From the Housing Dept. scandal to the Transit tax fiasco, the Herald is constantly breaking important local investigative stories. Sadly, tv will never pick up the slack. The community as a whole is losing out because of this. The winners will be the corrupt politicians and others who rule this town.
A couple of things…first, if Tony Ridder had not become preoccupied with real estate and become involved in fixing the election which resulted in the building of AAA, when a perfectly serviceable arena is still down the block, perhaps the attention could have been devoted to journalism and repairing the bottom line from a publishing perspective. But then Tony the carpetbagger sold out and moved to Silicon Valley–and good riddance. Now, the Herald can save money by letting LeBatard’s sabbatical become permanent, and then start focusing on people who do read newspapers and stop trying to draw people who don’t. With the size of the illiterate population in South Florida, readers are a limited audience as it is. The Herald has a good start on the web-their internet site is very good, and I think McClatchy is far better suited to fix this paper than the hacks at Ridder would have been.
who’s getting laid off?
Who is getting laid off? Everybody.
You see, we have done some award winning reporting, but by in large we are a leftist organization with leftist leanings and has left us with no audience. We tried blaming the TV, but than we made TV our partners and that didn’t work either.
We tried blaming the Internet, but heck lots of people are successful on the Internet doing news. So, that excuse didn’t work.
We just resisted change thinking we were the Herald and that would be enough. Guess people had enough of the Herald.
Leftist organization? Pleeassse!! Newspapers all over the country are dying…its a national trend not a left wing conspiracy.
Rachel Ray,
I never said anything about a conspiracy. You must be in the media. Quit making things up!
Yes, newspapers all over the country are dying. They are all far left leaning ones, New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, San Fran Chron, Miami Herald, and I could go on and on.