I’m curious to know if anyone knows anything about the layoffs at the Citizen-Times last week. They’ve been forcing older employees out for a while, and now Gannett is having layoffs nationwide. The C-T has been virtually content free for a very long time.

Will the MountainXpress cover this? Not for the schadenfreude, of course, but because it’s part of a huge national trend this year hitting the local economy. As a one time reporter (who timed his exit from newspapers right, thank God) I shudder to think about the thousands of people who’ve been kicked to the curb or bought out in the past year. I wouldn’t want to be looking for a media or PR position right now. It’s been a bloodbath, and it’s not going to do anything good to the media situation in Asheville, which has a lot of niche publications, but very little in the way of hard news reporting. The MX does it’s best to pick up the slack, covering the city council and commissioner’s meetings religiously, but you gotta wonder what’s slipping through the cracks.  Gannett’s (and the entire newspaper industry’s) financial situation isn’t going to be getting better anytime soon.

It’s a very tricky thing to report on another publication without it coming across as sniping, but I expect Xpress will do something on it. Of course, the real reason the AC-T is coming apart at the seams is because we hired their best writer/blogger away from them. (AshVegas FTW.)

Ash got out of there just in time and the right time for us MountainX lovers.  I’m here and there always taking photos of my beloved Asheville and usually I’ll run into him on his scooter.  He’s a good journalist and a good friend.

Steve Shanafelt - 19 August 2008 10:28 AM

It’s a very tricky thing to report on another publication without it coming across as sniping, but I expect Xpress will do something on it. Of course, the real reason the AC-T is coming apart at the seams is because we hired their best writer/blogger away from them. (AshVegas FTW.)

It’s true that it is a tricky issue, but you can’t really trust any media insitution to report accurately on it’s own financial woes. Your own Mr. Sanford pointed out on his personal blog that the CT’s coverage of Gannett’s cuts amounted to an inside brief of maybe four column inches. It’s easy to get a broad picture of the newspaper situation from places like Romenesko, but when it comes down to how the big picture affects communities that have papers owned by these huge conglomerates that are swimming in debt and looking at years of declining revenues the process kind of breaks down.

We’re a few days away from the next round of Citizen-Times layoffs. The Gannett Blog, however, is reporting that the company had a 23.49% profit margin in the first three quarters of 2007—raking in something like $20.6 million.

Here’s the post: http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/documents-reveal-double-digit-profit.html

For a detailed insight on how much cash it takes to feed the Gannett machine—the same machine that’s planning big layoffs next week—visit Jim Hopkins blog post with a report stating what profit margins and ad sales different papers made last year in the first three quarters.
http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/documents-reveal-double-digit-profit.html

Here are the first four listings, which include our very own Asheville Citizen-Times:

# Alexandria, La.: 20.56% margin; $9.7 million in ad sales
# Appleton, Wisc.: 32.47%; $22.2
# Asbury Park, N.J.: 19.16%; $82.3
# Asheville, N.C.: 23.49%; $20.6

Again, these reported numbers are for Jan-Sept 07; they don’t cover this year. The economy and daily-newspaper performance fell of the cliff this year, so the margins would surely be worse this year. But then, statistically, big city papers have fared worse than small towns like Asheville.

To calculate the net dollars taken out of the market and turned over to corporate, according to Hopkins’ post, multiply the ad sales times the margin. For Asheville, that comes to $4.8 million. For all of 2007, if Hopkins has it right, Gannett pulled about $7 million out of Asheville/WNC.