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August 9, 2007

New York Times Co: The big squeeze continues

By Thomas Lifson

The latest victims of cutbacks at the New York Times Company are employees of the company's subsidiary newspaper in Sarasota, FL, the Herald-Tribune. The paper notes the cutbacks coming:
The Herald-Tribune is revamping its features sections and consolidating its Venice, North Port, Englewood and Port Charlotte operations, a move that will result in an unspecified number of layoffs.

The media company will drop the daily Florida West section, adding more focused tabloid-size sections resembling Ticket. [snip]


With the consolidation, the Herald-Tribune will start new interactive Web sites geared toward allowing the public to share their news, photos and videos.
That last point allows readers to generate content, which is much cheaper than hiring journalists, even low paid ones. Of course, it does make the newspaper more like a blog, except with all the overhead of a corporate subsidiary.  Translated into corporate/ bureaucratic language, the blog-like policies comes across this way:
"We want to try a new approach," she said. "People are consuming information in new and different ways and we are trying to adapt to that by doing more on the Web and doing more to appeal to special interests.

"At the same time, we are forced by economic conditions to seek operational efficiencies. This accomplishes that as well, by saving on some newsprint and on production costs."
The NYTCo bought the Sarsota paper in 1982 for a reported $86 million. The company just last year built a new headquarters building in Sarasota designed by renowned cutting edge architectural firm Arquitectonica. Readers are invited to examine the company's lavish promotion of the lavish landmark structure, and consider what kind of overhead a competitive blog site might have to bear. The company boasted:  
The cost of the entire project was $27 million. The building itself cost $17 million to design and build. [snip]

It has taken more than three years to design and build the Herald-Tribune's new headquarters.
The company managed to get some tax financing for the project:
...the city collects Tax Increment Financing, tax money that is generated by incremental increases in value which, in turn, fund infrastructure and other improvements.
It does sound as though the company is finally developing some understanding that the old newsprint and bureaucratic model of running their business is dying, just as it has built expensive facilities in Sarasota and Manhattan and focused on newspapering. As Forbes noted  yesterday, the NYTCo has become even more of a pure play on the newspaper business of late, which would seem to be doubling down on a losing hand, given the decline in the outlook for newsprint.

Hat tip: Clarice Feldman
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