The Los Angeles Times will cut 250 jobs, including 150 in its editorial departments, the paper's editor has announced.
The paper itself will also shrink: A makeover this fall will result in 15 per cent fewer pages and shorter news stories, editor Russ Stanton said.
''The number one reason that people cancel the L.A. Times is, they tell us, they don't have enough time to read the paper that we give them every day,'' Stanton said Wednesday.
''We're going to be more picky about the stories we choose to write long, and a lot more picky about the ones we write shorter.''
He said layoffs were necessary because of a decline in ad sales that is worsening because of falling real estate prices in U.S. cities.
The Times also plans to merge its web and print publishing operations.
The story noted that the LAT employed 1,200 people in its newsroom in 2000. By Labour Day, that will be down to 700.
The Wall Street Journal noted the following in a July 2 article:
The Los Angeles Times' announcement came the same day as Journal Communications Inc. said it would cut about 10% of its 1,300-strong work force at its Milwaukee Journal Sentinel paper and related publications. Numerous newspaper publishers have slashed thousands of jobs in recent months as the newspaper-revenue climate further darkens amid a cooling economy, shriveling real-estate markets and the continuing migration of readers and advertisers to the Internet.
In a Nov. 8, 2006 blog posting on the firing of Dean Baquet, one of Stanton's predecessors and someone who balked at cuts, online publishing executive Steve Yelvington wrote:
I'm sorry to see Dean Baquet lose his job as editor of the Los Angeles Times. I take no joy in the wholesale restructuring of the newspaper business that I see unfolding before us. But it's real, it's necessary and it's driven by economic and technological change beyond our control. This is not the result of evil owners and management conspiring against the good guys, and making speeches about how editors need to stand up against an "irrational era of cost-cutting" is not helping.
We need editors to stop blaming their bosses and help figure out what successful surviving newspapers will look like in five years. They may be smaller, and certainly newsrooms will be smaller, but that doesn't mean they won't be good and possibly great, or that they won't perform their public mission. They will be different. Get over that and focus on making the best difference possible.
Here's some stuff from my archives on the U.S.'s fourth-largest daily newspaper:
April 5, 2008 - 'Citizen Sam' (about Tribune Co. CEO Samuel Zell)
Feb. 19, 2008 - Malaise at the L.A. Times
Jan. 22, 2008 - Departing LAT editor blasts paper, Tribune Co.
Jan. 20, 2008 - Another L.A. Times editor leaves over job cuts
June 3, 2007 - The bitter relief of a buyout
Feb. 1, 2007 - Baquet lands on his feet
Nov. 18, 2006 - An insider on the troubles at the L.A. Times
Oct. 6, 2006 - LAT publisher Johnson sacked
Sept. 25, 2006 - The LAT's civil rebellion
Sept. 19, 2006 - L.A. Times editor balking at job cuts