Word: riddering
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...Milwaukee Sentinel announced a merger, destroying about 500 jobs--and creating yet another one-newspaper town. In March the Fort Worth Star-Telegram abandoned its all-day edition. In April the Houston Post walked off the field, leaving its rival, the Chronicle, with the run of the city. Knight-Ridder then announced plans to cut 250 jobs at its two Philadelphia newspapers, the Daily News and the Inquirer. In the fall, managers at the Hartford Courant, which had never laid off a worker since its founding in 1764, asked 188 staff members to take voluntary buyouts, citing financial pressure from...
...problem, though, is that for many newspaper owners--and their stockholders--12.5% margins are no longer good enough. Tony Ridder, CEO of Knight-Ridder's 17-paper empire, explains that he must answer to many masters. "I've got a number of constituencies: the customers, the communities in which we do business, and I've got the shareholders." And some shareholders remember the boom-boom 1980s, when newspaper profit margins routinely approached 20%. Cold reality hit along with the recession in the early 1990s: retailing, then retail advertising, then newspapers dependent on such advertising suffered, and profits fell. Ridder insists...
...many newsrooms, however, morale is hitting an all-time low--though journalists are famously cranky. For example, at the Philadelphia Inquirer, which is under pressure from parent company Knight-Ridder to boost profit margins from 8% to 12% this year and 15% the next, staff members cite with dismay the collapse of the time-honored wall between "church" and "state"--the editorial side and the business side--which is meant to ensure journalistic integrity. The head of circulation now sits in on story meetings, while reporters and editors must take "business literacy" classes to learn how the publishing side works...
...Challinor] to challenge the reigning orthodoxies of corporate America," the letter stated, "and persuade her peers at Knight-Ridder to equitably and expeditiously settle its dispute with the striking workers...
...colleagues, urge Dr. Challinor to exhibit the same human impulse as a member of the board of Knight Ridder that she does at the Schlesinger Library," the letter concluded...