Time for the boss to fall on his sword
If Gary Pruitt, the chief executive officer of McClatchy Newspapers, has any sense of decency and dignity, he will resign. Today. Right now.
The News & Observer, where I worked for 14 years and made many friends, informed more than two dozen employees yesterday that their services will no longer be needed. Some of them are parents with children who are approaching college age. All of them, like everyone else these days, need their jobs. But they have been let go by a newspaper that still makes a profit.
The N&O is not uniquely tragic in this regard. Every McClatchy paper is cutting back. While a few of them are financially ailing — the California papers, for instance, or the Miami Herald, all of which are located in housing-meltdown states — others are relatively prosperous (”relatively” being the key part of that phrase). But for one extraordinary factor, those ailing papers could contract as necessary and the better-off papers, like the N&O, could remain fully staffed.
That extraordinary factor, of course, is the $2 billion in debt that Pruitt draped over the McClatchy balance sheet.
McClatchy’s purchase of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, which Pruitt engineered, was a roll of the dice. He explicitly bet that newspapers could adapt to the digital future, and implicitly bet that the economy would remain strong. The second bet was lost, and the first doesn’t look good. The result? Thousands of McClatchy employees have lost their jobs in the wake of three cutbacks in less than a year.
Pruitt didn’t lose his job, though. Oh, sure, he’s taking a 15 percent salary cut and won’t get a bonus this year. But I imagine my newly jobless friends at the N&O would happily take that deal.
They didn’t roll the dice. Pruitt did. Why does he get to stay and they have to go? At this point, Pruitt’s services aren’t critical. Corporate butchery requires no special talent, and that’s all Pruitt brings to the table these days. It’s time for him to acknowledge that he made a huge mistake, and leave.
Had the dice rolled his way, Pruitt would have reaped fat bonuses and lavish stock options. Instead, he came up snake eyes, and it’s only right that he lose his job — just like so many others have.
March 17th, 2009 at 8:11 am
The N&O was going to fail anyway.
Buh-Bye to the P. I.: Couldn’t happen to a more liberal paper. Check that. It can and it will.
The death of the P.I. and its “life in death” on the Web is only the second in a trend that will grow. And as the other papers fail into the Web we will hear, again and again, about the Internet, about Craigslist, about The Drudge Report, and a hundred other reasons these papers are dead. What we will never hear is that their editorial policies and news slanting were part and parcel of their demise. We will never hear about the willed insults, slights, and snubbing of fully half of their potential circulation pool. Journalists and editors write a lot about “taking personal responsibility” when it comes to others. You never hear them write that about themselves. There’s no mea culpa among liberal newspaper journalists these days. There’s only “The Internet ate my newspaper.”
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/these_just_in/buhbye_to_the_p.php
March 17th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Pruitt is indeed fully discredited and deserves to go…how the McClatchy board of family no-counts, hangers-on and other flotsam and jetsom figure he’s got any credibility or anything left to offer, I’ll never know. As I’ve said before, the irony is that if the Daniels had kept the business in the family, they’d be doing okay right now. Of the 27 “news” positions to be eliminated, I’d start with the editorial page staff. Alot of arrogance and hot air resides there.
March 17th, 2009 at 11:09 am
McClatchy is driving itself into the ground, and things aren’t looking too good for the N&O.
Last week Drudge reported about the Incredible Shrinking Washington Post. Sunday morning I opened my N&O and had to dig through the ad inserts, looking for the rest of my Sunday Comics section. Half the pages were missing, I thought.
Then I looked at the flimsy one page of comics I had: Holy Postage Stamps, Batman!
I was not missing pages. The Comics were reduced in size–and many strips had panels smaller than postage stamps, with 2-point lawyer-sized print.
I can’t read them! I refuse to buy magnifying glasses beyond my most recent prescription lenses in order to cooperate with N&O’s latest “revenue saving” strategy!
I’ve been pushed over the edge. Since N&O now sends me to the web to read even my Sunday cartoons… I’ll just sustain ALL my news and entertainment addiction from my desktop PC, in a font size that I can read. I had to do it the last two Sundays anyway, because my N&O carrier failed to deliver.
It’s simply not worth the hassle for what is at best yesterday’s news. By the time a Knight-Ridder or AP story surfaces in N&O newsprint, I’ve already read it twice on Breitbart.
I’ll save the N&O money by removing my name from the subscriber list. No more bothersome sales and delivery, no more accounts receivable hours need to be spent entering my subscription payment. I called N&O circulation at 800-522-4205 and terminated our paper-based relationship.
Shrinking newspapers, indeed. I just contributed my own shrinkage to N&O. (And… No, I did not just get out of the pool…)
Hasta la manana, N&O. I can get my Barry, Ruth, or rare Dennis fix on the Web… and the rest of my news from the Web as well, sans the smarmy left-bent patronizing editorial tone.
Buh-buy, N&O. Smell ya later.
March 17th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
A letter to the editor of the PI….
Editor,
So sad to see the P-I winding down. Every day there’s less and less to read. But it’s so hard to run a business these days, isn’t it? What with over taxation, overregulation, extortionist lawsuits, runaway liability expenses, hostile labor unions, it’s a miracle any business in King County survives. And the P-I, after all, is only a business.
But wait a minute.
Haven’t the editorial pages of your newspaper always been for more taxes, for more business regulation, for more reasons to sue a business, for stronger labor unions, for anything and everything that makes running a business the arduous and thankless chore it has become? Yes, I do believe that’s true.
So, maybe, just maybe, you idiots richly deserve the fate that awaits you. The chickens are coming home to roost.
Jeffrey Weiser
Redmond
March 17th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
[…] So the failure of print media is a failure of advertising, not a failure of news. That, coupled with the fact that many newspaper companies (such as McClatchy) took on too much debt, is the reason that print media are fighting for their lives. Advertising is weak; online ads aren’t bringing in money the way print ads did in their heyday. Yet readership is strong, online if not in print. […]
March 17th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
LB, what a great guy you are. Smiling over the misfortune of others who really do believe in what they do. I hope you and your buddy Rush have a good time with Hitler roasting hot dogs in Hell.
March 17th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Yes, Pruitt should do the right thing and step down.
Sure, newspapers liberal bias is what’s killing them. And CNN will soon go under because of its liberal bias, I’m sure. Then there will be MSNBC, Newsweek and oh! The Nation, and….
March 17th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Actions have consequences. Misfortune created by your own bad actions is called just deserts.
“others who really do believe in what they do.”
So the world owes them a living? Maybe in their own minds.
And you lose. Godwin’s law
March 17th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
“The N&O is profitable.” How do we know? The same people who are doing the layoffs are the ones who told us this… and unless they open the books, we’ll have to take them at their word.
Newspapers are dying because no one has time to read them. We get to work and read the news online. I can’t tell you the number of times I went to the home of a journalist in their 20s or 30s and found a pile of rolled-up papers by the door. If young journalists aren’t reading it….
March 17th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
First off, come on GD, there were 78 employees informed yesterday they no longer have employment at The N&O . I hope you are not showing some “newsroom bias” by noting in your column that “more than two dozen” were no longer needed. With that said I too am a former N&O employee who has several friends who lost their job yesterday. Yes, many are people who are doing their jobs well and now due to the cold hearted people at McClatchy wonder how they will feed their families and provide household expenses. How many of those employees could be saved by Mr. Pruitt taking his pay down several million. How many could be saved if Mr. Quarles took his pay down several hundred thousand as well. Ditto that across the McClatchy chain with corporate VP’s and highly paid publishers. These are the people responsible for this mess and they are not feeling the pain of unemployment. I also wonder how Mr. Ford writes editorials with any moral standing about other companies screwing their employees, when his company is doing that and worse. What a sad state of affairs we have here. What has happened to this once great newspaper?
March 17th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Bob: You’re right, of course. There were many more than “two dozen” people pushed out the N&O’s door this week. I only referred to the newsroom’s losses. But I was friends with many non-news employees at the paper, and it was wrong for me to treat them as afterthoughts. Thanks for the reminder. I needed it.
Chappy: McClatchy is a public company, and its profit-and-loss information is right there for everyone to see. It makes a profit on its core business of publishing newspapers. The losses have mostly come in the form of writedowns of assets that have lost value (which in finance-speak is called an “impairment”). If the company broke down its financials paper by paper (which it doesn’t), we’d probably see that some are, in fact, money losers … the Miami Herald, for instance. But the Triangle remains a strong market, and the N&O still operates in the black.
March 17th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Ya ya, the 10Q or something, right? Totally forgot. My bad. Can you give us a link to that info? I’m up to my neck in Web server work today, no time to track it down myself. Thanky.
It’s just seems that everywhere I hear, “Our paper is profitable, the company is dragging us down.” So I want to know for certain who’s making what. although you mention it isn’t broken down paper-by-paper, which kind of takes me back to my first point.
Awesome column today, BTW. if you haven’t already heard, it’s mentioned on cancelthebee.blogspot.com, a blog by a bitter (and conservative) ex-McClatchy employee. Where ARE all these damn liberal journalists, anyway? sheesh.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Raleigh has not been hit hard by the recession — yet — but the N&O’s fortunes have been declining, have they not? Whether N&O is profitable is immaterial: The question is HOW profitable, and for how much longer would it have remained so?
All newspapers are doomed, in every U.S. market, unless they radically cut and restructure.
N&O may have a better chance of survival through drastic change while it’s still healthy; for many other newspapers, it’s much too late for any change to work.
Unfortunately, I still agree with what I believe to be this article’s ultimate point: Pruitt is not making the changes that will help newspapers evolve. His strategies seem to be fundamentally flawed.
To evolve, newspapers must preserve local news writing, get rid of the content that can already be found elsewhere, renew readers’ perception that local media provide unique local content.
To compete in an era of free and low-cost competition, newspapers must dismiss costly layers of editors and managers, and pay local content creators by the piece for original work that is of genuine local interest.
Because of its much higher costs, local investigative journalism may have to be handled by specialty content providers at a premium price.
Current McClatchy management does not appear to be up to the task — but to be fair, are the unions any more prepared to let go of layers of editors, salary-based compensation, and benefits?
March 18th, 2009 at 8:58 am
One can only hope to be still standing when the impersonal axe of this Grand Recession falls on Locomotive Breath. It will be interesting to see if callous political certainty gives way to imperiled self interest. Be advised not to trot out this line of talk to any N & O employee you meet on the street.
March 18th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Locomotive Breath, keep up the good work. Don’t let the sad insults of an old man (who professionally considers causing others to cower behind their desks for fear of honest dialogue to be a badge of honor) to have any other opinion that to simply threaten you to “not trot out this line of talk.” Easy to bully from the ivory tower. Implied threats of violence to streetwalkers aside, the facts on the ground prove who’s correct LB. Again, well said.
March 18th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Dang, ITA — knew I was old, but didn’t know I made you cower behind a desk out of fear. As for honest dialogue, you continually project your own shortcomings on me. Never have set foot in an ivory tower — or the electronic bubble your notions seem to spring from.