The Oregonian announces layoffs of 37 employees

[cascadiance]

Source: OregonLive.com

By The Oregonian
February 24, 2010, 9:39AM
The Oregonian announced today the layoffs of 37 employees. The majority are in the news department, with smaller numbers in advertising, circulation and accounting. Affected staff members were notified this morning.

Severance packages were offered. Staffers were informed last year that layoffs were likely this month. The Oregonian, like all newspapers, has endured declining revenues the past few years, the result of the recession and the migration of advertising to the Internet.

After the layoff, Oregonian Publishing Company will have 750 employees, more than 200 of whom work in the news department.

“These layoffs are a painful but necessary part of our 2010 budget, which was developed to ensure financial stability for The Oregonian now and in the future,” said N. Christian Anderson III, president and publisher of The Oregonian.

Read more: http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2010/02/the_oregonian_announces_layoff.html

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People here in Portland have been objecting to their tilt towards right wing editorial content and their ownership is out of town and owns other right wing publishing properties. He editorialized against state props to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Thankfully they passed despite that effort to change Portlanders minds unsuccessfully. Looks like those of us cancelling subscriptions, etc. are having an effect.

Would be nice if the Portland Mercury or another publication could start taking some of this publication's audience and provide another more informative publication that we can get behind and still give decent reporters a place to work here.

[depakid]

1. Hiring a conserva-libertarian from Orange County, California surely didn't help their circulation

One of the more amusing fiasco's at that paper came in 2003 with the East Coast blackout.

Given that it's in the heart of silicon forest- most would have thought that they'd use the abundant local talent for their website (especially considering that the area was still mired in the tech crash). Nope- some Ohio company does it (and to this day it's still crappy).

Hence- they were down for the count- leading website readers to go:

:wtf:

To make matters worse, they were laughed at and chided for it by the local alternative rag, who a few years later, scooped them on a story that they'd covered up for years and won the Pulitzer Prize for it!

Scooped by the free alternative weekly out of a Pulitzer Prize!

[cascadiance]

5. Perhaps alternative papers winning prizes is a growing trend...

A good friend of mine from San Diego who's also a DUer here started an alternative online paper to the San Diego Union Tribune (who's also gone through some heavy layoffs, including some of the reporters that did a bang up job breaking the story that put Randy Duke Cunningham in prison).

They swept the local county's press club awards in 2008 with basically an in your face to the Union Tribune for their cutting to the bone the meat of their reporting staff, and also their right wing editorial staff and election endorsements.

http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/east_county_magazine_staff_sweep_sd_press_club_awards

For 2009 they also won quite a 18 of the local awards too.

http://www.writerink.com/

Just recently had a nice thread on KOS that discussed their exposing some real lame local TV news reporting of a GOP chairman posing as a "concerned teabagger"...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/2/21/10934/3873

And this is in a substantially more conservative community than Portland. She's added some features that many people, not just us liberals, like in the community. Things like email alerts for fires and other weather and traffic related road closures and emergency situations. Perhaps if Williamette Weekly would start doing more things like this, they could seize upon the opportunity to grow their subscriber list and perhaps even taken on some of the valuable staff that was let go by the Oregonian.

Hopefully we can both help the out of work reporters land someplace new, and perhaps give progressives a better presence calling local news too. I wouldn't mind helping with this too. PM me if you wan to chat more on this...

[SpiralHawk]

9. America has had right-wing propaganda shoved up its wazoo

who can blame Americans for not wanting to pay the Oregonian for more of it? Sheesh. Give the people actual, real 'fair and balanced' news -- not Fox-republicon BS chewed over -- and they might support your paper.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

12. +1

[condoleeza]

2. Count me as another who cancelled my subscription

Originally I cancelled it during the '08 election when they sent out the anti-muslim DVD. Last fall they made me an offer I couldn't refuse - $1 a week - so I said OK. Took them 3 months to piss me off again during the recent election when they put the extra 1/2 front page out the week before the election in January and now they are giving it to me free - sponsored by an advertiser.

It's sad, I worked there right out of school and I knew Patrick Stickel when he was just a kid, his brother worked with me and of course we all knew Fred. It's no surprise that so many people left when they brought the new guy in. The paper will never be the same. I still don't know who all was let go, but from the tone of Duin's columns of late I'll be surprised if he's not among them. Will miss Margie, but we're friends on Facebook so I imagine I'll hear wazzup soon.

All papers will be gone soon, kinda sad. Craigslist has had a devastating effect on the advertising and they can only print as much as the advertising $ pays for. The O is down to the size of what used to be just the front section.

[depakid]

3. More on the layoffs from the local alternative Willamette Week

Comments:

So much for that ‘no layoff pledge’! Maybe if the Oregonian could start putting the opinion pieces only in the editorial section instead of the front page, they could increase their circulation?

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They got rid of the pledge last year, when they realized that laying off their cheaper “part-time” staff wasn’t going to cut it. It’s a horrible death spiral. They cut staff, so the paper suffers and shrinks, so the ad and circulation revenue falls, so they cut more staff… I think they cut some more copy editors this time, and they already pushed the deadline up an hour and have people editing sections they’re not accustomed to (e.g. news people doing sports). The copy editors are miserable having to send out sections they barely have time to read. You know how that must kill people who actually give a crap about the quality of the paper.

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I’m conflicted about this. I’m a life-long paper newspaper reader. I love reading the paper.

But I canceled my Oregonian subscription after the “No on 66/67″ spadea incident. I informed the Oregonian that I disagreed with that method of editorializing/advertising, I disagreed with the direction the paper was headed, and that I was canceling my 7-day subscription that I’ve held since moving to Oregon in 1986.

I hate that people are losing their jobs. The minute Mr. Anderson is handed a pink slip I’ll re-subscribe and stay a subscriber unless the new publisher is just as abysmal. I hope the paper and its employees can hold on until then.

http://blogs.wweek.com/news/2010/02/24/the-oregonian-lays-off-37-people/

[SimonBolivar]

4. The Oregonian announces layoffs of 37 employees

Given the political leanings of the majority of people in the Greater Portland Metropolitan Area, it's amazing they've lasted as long as they have. Maybe they can survive if they stop trying to influence elections and stop catering to the I've-got-mine crowd.

[customerserviceguy]

11. It's size has helped it

I mean, tabloids are really lousy for wrapping salmon...

[SimonBolivar]

6. Cathy

I forget what year it was, but does anybody remember when the Oregonian pulled a couple of days of the "Cathy" cartoon because the editors thought it would hurt the Republican presidential candidate in the election? How utterly despicable and pathetic.

[depakid]

7. They also dropped Arianna Huffington over a column she wrote on SUV's

Although they seem to have no problem publishing serial liars like Krauthammer, George Will, and Jonah Goldberg.

And of course, they never miss a piece by the boring old Beltway drone David Broder.

(This in addition to some guest columns whose factual inaccuracy shocks even the more cynical seen it all types like me).

Re: The Arianna fiasco:

Ever since Arianna Huffington began her transformation from Newt Gingrich Republican to scourge of corporate evildoers, critics and admirers alike have tried to find her a new label. Is she a Democrat now? A John McCain Republican? Some kind of left-winger? Two weeks ago, the Portland Oregonian decided that whatever she is, Huffington isn't a journalist anymore, insisting that her satiric, widely covered ad campaign linking SUVs to terrorism had crossed the invisible line that separates analysts from activists, and dropped her syndicated column.

That's Portland's loss. Whatever Huffington decides to call herself, she is a lucid, entertaining writer, one of the best working in the limiting 750-words-and-out Op-Ed form today. She's been chipping away at her new book, "Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America," for the last two years in the pages of Salon and roughly 50 newspapers, using her twice-weekly column to gather the raw material on the looting of America by greedy corporate titans.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/02/11/arianna/

[cascadiance]

8. Looks like this thread picked up an unrec... I still wonder who unrecs threads like this!

[Parche]

10. too bad one of them is not Jack Ohman

gawd his so called cartoons suck...:grr: :hi: