Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
More brutal news for anyone in the newspaper industry:
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – As workers at McClatchy properties in
Charlotte, the Triangle, Raleigh, Cary and Smithfield arrived at their respective offices Monday, a lot of
them found out they no longer had a job.
With little warning to employees other than persistent rumors that cutbacks were coming, McClatchy
told Wall Street before the markets opened that the nation’s third largest newspaper chain would cut 10
percent of its workforce. The company also announced its revenues plunged 15 percent in May from a
year earlier.
At The News & Observer, reporters were still scrambling for information about the cuts as lunch
approached. “We don’t know anything beyond what’s in the press release,” one staffer said. No staff
meeting had been called to discuss what a staffer called a “nerve-wracking situation.”
After lunch, publisher Orage Quarles lowered the boom – 70 jobs or 8 percent of The N&O’s full-time
workforce – will be let go. Cuts are to be made in multiple departments, including news. But even at
2:15 p.m. neither Quarles nor John Drescher, the newspaper’s editor, had convened a staff meeting to
discuss the moves.
Given the company’s worsening financial performance, layoffs should have come as no surprise.
However, the Associated Press in its coverage of the story noted that the McClatchy move – about 1,400
jobs across the nation’s third largest newspaper chain – was an “unusually broad and deep effort to
contain costs”
More than people at The N&O could be affected. McClatchy also operates its McClatchy Interactive
division in the Triangle. However, Chris Hendricks, vice president for interactive media, declined an
interview request from WRAL.com.
The Charlotte Observer is the state’s largest newspaper and maintains a bureau of four people in
Raleigh. Whether that operation will be affected by the layoffs wasn’t clear as of noon. Inquiries from
WRAL.com about the bureau were directed to the Observer’s publisher. The newspaper is cutting 11
percent, or 123 positions, of its workforce. The newsroom will lost 22 spots.
(The Miami Herald went way beyond 10 percent, announcing a 17-percent staff reduction, or 250 jobs.)
In the Triangle, other McClatchy properties include The Smithfield Herald and the Cary News. The
N&O also has bureaus in Durham and Chapel Hill. McClatchy operates several newspapers in South
Carolina as well.
Other cutbacks in expenses also will be made, McClatchy said. Each newspaper is responsible for
making cuts in its operations and notifying the people affected.
In a statement, McClatchy Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the layoffs and other cost reductions
were “essential.”
