One hundred fifty of the Los Angeles Times Media Group’s 250 total job cuts will happen at the namesake paper, with more than one-sixth of the staff being shown the door. And the newspaper will trim its pages by 15 percent, resulting in an even thinner newspaper. This is a much larger bloodletting than execs previously let on; a few months back they were only expected about 50 positions to be lost. Then Sam Zell’s blood sugar dropped, and he got much more vicious. [NYT]
Know how it used to be a running joke that reality TV shows would, in the credits, scroll the names of the writers, even though a reality TV show is supposed to, you know, be based on reality? And not need writers?
Then here’s a new one for you: Fox News is looking for a “fact writer.” CONTINUED »
We’re hearing Rob Shuter, the lying former Jessica Simpson publicist who just took over OK!’s executive editor post (since arriving as entertainment editor, then being named deputy ed), just named editorial manager Katie Caperton to the deputy editor slot, while nightspot staple Shauna Bass (of Life & Style) was installed as news editor. We’re also told tabloid vet David Caplan, currently at People, was offered the exec ed slot by EIC Sarah Ivens about a month ago, but turned it down.
As major news outlets continue shelling out for a very expensive election season (Debates: $500k-$1m a pop; Convention coverage: ~$2m), some might be looking to cut corners. Networks like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News already have some version of a user-generated news product, where viewers are solicited to send in tips and photos, that’s less about getting all Web 2.0 than it is about getting everyday citizens to act as unpaid reporters (or so the inner cynic in us believe). But that doesn’t mean the media are cooling down — quite the opposite. With the feisty Democratic primary done with, it’s time to explore every possible angle leading up to November. Like what the temperature is on college campuses. Which explains why CBSNews.com, WashingtonPost.com, and university press syndicate UWIRE.com are teaming to find “15 to 20 top reporters” to keep their readers plugged in to who’s waving what campaign banner on the Quad. They need everybody from investigative journalists to photographers to satirists to play a part. Interested? Fantastic. Just tell them how you like to be paid: Cash, cheque, wire transfer, or … exposure. CONTINUED »
“I think, if anything, the books like Devil Wears Prada and Because She Can have made things worse for assistants, because now bosses are less willing to let you work on important things, at least in New York. They’re paranoid. They think, ‘What could my assistant rat out about me?’” That’s Save The Assistants founder and “industry help” godmother Lilit Marcus in today’s Observer, bouncing off the newspeg of Jennifer Hudson starring as Carrie’s assistant in the Sex and the City movie. These underpaid ladder climbers are rewarded not with cash or prestige, but with their boss’ Rolodex and the chance to network their way into a better job every night. And while it’s no secret this corps of hired help is so often abused, many, such as the twentysomethings holding these jobs, continue to wonder, “Why?” CONTINUED »
It’s not like Sam Zell ever promised to keep anyone around at the Los Angeles Times. He’s got billions in debt he needs to keep stable, which means he’s got a couple plans up his sleeve. Obvious first choice: job cuts. Except Zell calls this down-sizing “right-sizing,” because, based on his calculations that the average LAT journo produces the equivalent of 51 pages a year, while competitors in Hartford and Baltimore spit out 300 pages, the current staff overload is just waste. And so all of this will bring into focus his other big task, which is evening out the editorial:advertising ratio to 1:1, which will also allow him to shrink the actual size of the paper and the number of pages printed per year. And finally, Zell has taken to addressing his thousands of employees as “partners,” if only because the future of the Times, and its debt load, depend on their stock-option plan.
As News Corp.’s HarperCollins pushes out its chief Jane Friedman, Rupert Murdoch is smartly installing her deputy, Brian Murray, who, at 41, is 21 years her junior and is expected to usher is a new methodology. Or whatever. Basically, he’s expected to up profits.
No matter than Friedman has managed to double HarperCollins’ take during her 10 years there; in the fiscal year’s last nine months, her profits have slid $6 million, to $132 million, over last year. Which, theoretically, is not that big of a slide. But it’s part of the newest trend in book publishing: Out with the old, in with the new. Which isn’t exactly a new trend, but anyone will point to the ouster of Random House CEO Peter Olson last month, and his replacement of Markus Dohle, as evidence.
By all accounts, the move comes as a surprise, with top-level insiders at the publishing house not expecting her departure. So how to explain why Friedman, inarguably an industry talent, was given the heave ho?
Well, this Bill Moyers book deal might have something to do with it. Moyers, of course, was famously quoted in 2004 saying this, which couldn’t have sat well with Murdoch: CONTINUED »
Think the Washington Post buyouts were all sad news for the newspaper industry? Not for feature writer Linton Weeks, who pulled one of those Malcolm Gladwell-level stunts in a final article for the paper. Pick up every first letter of each paragraph in “Updike Reads The Lines in American Art,” and you won’t even need secret decoder glasses to find his closing message. CONTINUED »
“Bob Woodward is leaving the regular payroll of the Washington Post, along with about 100 other Posties who are accepting the paper’s generous early retirement package.
“For the Post’s legendary investigative reporter, however, the buyout may not exactly yield a windfall, largely because he has been drawing a salary of $10,000 for the past couple of years.
“The buyout gives the most senior Post staffers an exit payment of two times their final salary. On that basis, Woodward would get a check for $20,000, or enough for a 2008 Chrysler Sebring. He is 65 and started at the Post in 1971.
“Yet there’s an interesting wrinkle in Woodward’s package: That $10,000 salary? It represents a voluntary pay cut that took effect in mid-2006. Prior to that, Woodward earned a salary commensurate with his title as a Post assistant managing editor, about $180,000. If his exit payment is calculated on that basis, he’d get $360,000 via the buyout.
“The biz people at the paper are now trying to figure out whether to give Woodward the small payout or the large payout.” [WCP]
Thanks to the convenient doubling up of jobs that always happens when two companies merge, Thomson Reuters will be letting go of 140 of journalism’s finest by the end of the year, with more than half the cuts going down in Europe. [Guardian]
In other celebrity tabloid insider news, in addition to Us Weekly’s Joey Bartolomeo jumping to People, we hear In Touch just removed David Thompson, their West Coast bureau chief, who was described to us as “very strange” and one with “no people skills,” and simply wasn’t up to the task at hand.
He came aboard at the end of November from OK! (and, before that, The Globe), replacing Martin Gould (now at Star). Gould’s deputy at the time was Ashley Dillahunty, who remained the No. 2 on the West Coast as news director when Thompson took over.
Now, it’s her turn to shine: Dillahunti has been elevated to the bureau chief spot, while former Us Weekly staffer and 944 Vegas editor-in-chief Abby Tegnelia, who’s credited with breaking stories like Angelina Jolie giving birth to Shiloh in Namibia, and someone who’s been described to us as “talented” and “unassuming,” returns to In Touch to grab Dillahunty’s old post.
Texas Monthly, the award-winning and well-designed title that’s among few books to give New York a run for its region-specific/national-in-scope money, is saying goodbye to editor Mike Levy. [FBNY]
Lots of big names are taking buyouts at the Washington Post. [Portfolio]
Harry McCracken, the PC World EIC who was fired and re-hired last May after daring to criticize magazine advertiser Apple, is leaving the magazine. Again. On his own terms. He’s been at PC World in various capacities for 14 years, which is, like, pre-Facebook, pre-Blackberry, pre-TiVo. A whole other era! McCracken, who announced his departure on his blog, is leaving to start “a technology site of my own–one that I’ll build from scratch and launch this summer.” God, don’t let it be a social network. Or a blog.
Editorial Director
