Today’s the day that meetings were held at the Tribune to explain the details of the planned reorganization announced in April. Reading employees twitters gives an interesting look inside the newsroom.
Update 7:45pm: By the very nature of Twitter’s 140 character limit, these are all taken out of context, and should not be considered as a single conversation.
Tribune, WFLA To Trim News Staffing:
The Tampa Tribune said Tuesday that it will lay off 11 newsroom staffers this week with another 10 news jobs to be eliminated by early fall.
The newsroom will lose a total of 50 employees under the cost-cutting effort, with 29 either accepting a voluntary buyout offer or resigning for other reasons. The Tribune newsroom will have about 200 employees after the staff reductions.
The moves are part of a previously-announced streamlining by the Florida Communications Group, which operates the newspaper, WFLA, Channel 8 and TBO.com, among other media properties. FCG is part of Media General of Richmond, Va., which has been hard hit like other media companies by a soft advertising climate and a weak economy.
WFLA said it will have eliminated 10 news positions by the end of the year.
Tribune publisher and president Denise Palmer said newspapers’ traditional advertising base is being upended by the economic malaise and the impact of the Internet.
“You never want to have good people go away,” Palmer said. “But I also know you have to work within the revenue you bring in.”
I don’t know all of those TBO staff twitterers, and I have no idea if all the comments above even refer to the Florida Communications Group meeting. Just thought it was an interesting perspective.
Update 8pm: Journalism Professor Mindy McAdams got a description of the meeting from someone claiming to be there, while Eric Deggans gives his take on the news.
Emily Seawell
1 year ago
My top comment was in response to people from other newsrooms who have reported their young staffers are being targeted for layoffs, despite doing a lot of extra work to make a name for themselves.
To clarify, that hasn’t been the case at the Tribune.
Jeff Houck
1 year ago
For the record, I post on Twitter under TwitStew. (The logon is a combination of Twitter and The Stew, my food blog on TBO.com.)
In my Twitter post that you took out of context, I was referring to the language used in all of the layoff announcements in the past two weeks – media, automobile, etc – not specifically to what was said at the Tribune.
I would have been happy to clarify my Twitter post for you if you had e-mailed or called before you posted this to Sticks.
Also, the way you grouped the Twitter posts here makes it appear as if this was an ongoing conversation among the people you identified. It was nothing of the sort. All were independent postings.
As you and I have discussed previously in person, I use the TwitStew account on Twitter as a headline service of sorts for the food blog. At times, fellow Twitter members fire questions at me that I answer in a post on Twitter. Occasionally glitches in Twitter make posts appear without referral links to prior posts from those asking questions. That was the case with my “vague language” post.
Just wanted to clear that up.
Jessica DaSilva
1 year ago
Also to clarify, I was reading about layoffs at newspapers across the country. There were 900 last week.
tommy
1 year ago
Thanks to all of you for clarifying. By very nature of Twitter, they are all out of context, and have clarified that in an edit.
Jeff Houck
1 year ago
Mindy’s post has inaccuracies as well, as is noted in the comments section on her site.
What is it with
youus bloggers?Anonymous
1 year ago
The more accurate question Jeff is “What is it with you twitterers?!”
The Carl
1 year ago
Ironic how we’re having to depend on other sources to tell us what’s happening inside the Trib, whereas if this was any other company the Trib would go all out to get the story. Or maybe it’s something else besides irony. I’m sure somebody will be along to correct me on this point soon enough.
Lola
1 year ago
What is it with the Tribune?????
Again I received the Brandon neighborhood section instead of the Central Tampa neighborhood section in my paper this morning. This is like the 11th time this has happened in 2 months. I live in YBOR CITY PROPER. THE HEART OF YBOR CITY. CENTRAL TAMPA NOT BRANDON. I can go to the newspaper box around the corner on 7th Ave. and the Central Tampa section will be in THAT paper but not mine delivered to my door. I guess calling the customer service center in the Philippines for the 5th time in 30 days (no lie) with constant assurances this will never happen again ain’t doing the trick.
I will say I have consistently received my paper for 9 days in a row; 2 were delivered Sunday morning 30 minutes apart!! I’m still working that one out and it’s making my head hurt.
Why is the Tribune loosing money? Well let me give you a clue. You make it very difficult for your loyal readers to remain loyal. I went 5 days without a paper being delivered 2 weeks ago. For the last year, it’s hit or miss and I don’t mean they hit or miss my front porch when they deliver it!! They just miss my house. The real estate on the Hills. River has to cost a fortune. Yeah it’s a Taj Mahal but I just want a paper with news ok?
Somewhere the focus of the Tribune changed from providing an informative piece of media content to pleasing the stockholders. Try taking it back to basics of pleasing YOUR CUSTOMERS and you’ll sell more papers and the stockholders will be happy cause they’ll make money.
Closing thought….please fix TBO.com. It is SOOOOOO slow to load now; not even worth going to the site anymore. Oops, I forgot. I gotta call the Philippines to complain. Sorry.
John
1 year ago
This isn’t a new occurance. Even when cuts weren’t that deep at the Trib, more than a decade ago, my household subscribed to the Tribune for a year and then didn’t renew… But we got the Tribune DAILY FOR ANOTHER TWO YEARS AFTER OUR SUBSCRIPTION ENDED, DELIVERED DAILY!
Inefficient with a low satisfactory from subscribers and past subscribers — Mother Corporate knows nothing of satisfaction among consumers and readers. They just know the bottom line and that’s why the Tribune continues to slide.