Olympian to cut newsroom staff, workers' hours

By Brad Shannon | The Olympian • Published September 08, 2008

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OLYMPIA – The Olympian is shifting to a 37.5-hour workweek for all hourly employees and cutting newsroom jobs for the second time since June, Publisher John Winn Miller said Monday.

Miller announced the cutbacks in an e-mail to staff and later explained the company's buyout offers to 38 of the newsroom's 45 full- and part-time print and online employees. He said there was no specific quota or target number of jobs to eliminate through the buyouts, and he was unable to say what dollar savings the company must reach.

"Unfortunately, despite our progress, the economy continues to worsen, and we must reduce expenses further," Miller told employees in his e-mail, adding in person that it's something other McClatchy Co. papers have done since the June layoffs.

The Olympian cut 17 positions, including four in news and online operations, in June as part of McClatchy's elimination of 1,400 jobs corporationwide through voluntary and involuntary cuts. But those cuts were not enough in light of a worsening economy and falling newspaper revenue, Miller said.

More recently, Miller announced one-year pay freezes while the company adjusts to the cooling economy and shifts to a business model that emphasizes online news delivery.

The company also has consolidated advertising, technology and circulation departments with the McClatchy-owned News Tribune of Tacoma.

Despite the cuts and the recent consolidations, Miller said he thinks The Olympian, which has 180 full- and part-time workers, will survive as an independent news voice in the state capital.

Even so, newsroom employees felt a hit to morale, and several declined to comment on the record.

"Now I know this is what a coal miner and auto worker must feel like," said Chester Allen, longtime outdoors reporter and columnist for The Olympian.

The announcement comes at a time the newsroom is losing its leader of 10 years, Executive Editor Vickie Kilgore, who is retiring Friday for personal reasons. Kilgore has family with health issues in Tennessee.

The news industry in recent years has been in a race toward a new kind of profitability. As print readership declined and print-ad revenue suffered, online revenue struggled to keep pace, and that has become more acute with a weaker economy. Adding to the challenge for McClatchy was debt it acquired when it bought The Olympian and other former Knight-Ridder newspapers in 2006.

The publisher told employees the newspaper is still profitable but said there is a point at which a business must head off future losses when it sees its costs rising and revenue falling.

McClatchy, based in Sacramento, Calif., is the nation's third-largest newspaper chain. Cutbacks have come this year at other major publishers, including The New York Times, Gannett and Lee newspapers, as well as regionally at The Seattle Times.

McClatchy announced in July that its consolidated revenue fell 16.4 percent that month and advertising revenue was down 19.3 percent compared with the year before. Those declines were "partially offset by a 12.8 percent gain in online advertising revenues in July 2008 compared to July 2007," the company said in a news release.

The corporation's cost-cutting in June through voluntary and involuntary layoffs was aimed at saving about $100 million a year at 30 newspapers.