These newspapers generally have by industry standards fairly fat news staffs, so generally the layoffs are not draconian, |
They're sort of like anchors at a shopping mall. They tend to draw people to the newspaper. |
This is in response to fairly weak advertising performance, |
This is in response to fairly weak advertising performance. Consumers are just not stepping up to spend money the way they usually do. |
This is quite a dramatic change from what the history of the company has been in terms of whom the board has chosen to lead it. |
Tony Ridder inherited a company that had a lot of newspaper companies that are not in growing markets and would never be in growing markets. That's what he inherited, and that's what he had to work with. |
uncomfortable stuff for editors. |
When Tribune acquired Times Mirror they acquired papers with much lower operating profits than Tribune papers have traditionally thrown off. The L.A. Times has a larger staff than is typical for that size of paper. They've been trying to address that without appearing to be a slash-and-burn company. |
You don't want to just give this information to every Tom, Dick and Harry. You only want to give it to people who are going to do something with it. |
You need to know what's for sale and what isn't. Allowing [ads and editorial content] to get blurred, however you do it, is in the long run inimical to a newspaper's reputation - and probably to its business. |