Las Cruces Sun-News hit with layoffs
Posted 3/17/2009 01:05:00 PM
This article has been updated.
Three staffers at the Las Cruces Sun-News -- two in the editorial department and one in the advertising department -- have been laid off in the last week as the newspaper and its parent company deal with economic woes that are hampering the newspaper industry.
The editor of Pulse, the newspaper’s weekly entertainment insert, in addition to the typist who transcribes calls to Sound Off! and the paper’s only advertising writer, were all laid off in the last several days, sources confirmed. The layoffs come as all employees of the paper’s parent company, Denver-based MediaNews Group, are taking weeklong, unpaid furloughs before the end of this month to help the company make ends meet for the quarter.
When the furloughs were announced last month, MediaNews said they were an attempt to avoid layoffs.
The Sun-News is Las Cruces’ only daily newspaper.
In New Mexico, MediaNews owns the Ruidoso News and White Sands Missile Ranger. In addition to the Sun-News, it is the majority stakeholder in the Alamogordo Daily News, Carlsbad Current-Argus, Deming Headlight, Farmington Daily Times, the Four Corners Business Journal in Farmington and the Silver City Sun-News. Most of those newspapers are part of a partnership that also includes the El Paso Times in Texas.
The sources said there have been at least a couple of other positions eliminated at other MediaNews papers in New Mexico in recent weeks. The most recent layoffs come after a MediaNews executive traveled to El Paso to help the partnership cut costs.
New Mexico has been no stranger to newspaper cuts in recent years. It has lost the Albuquerque Tribune, and several other papers, including the Albuquerque Journal and Santa Fe New Mexican, have cut positions. MediaNews also eliminated its capitol bureau a few years ago.
Around the nation, several major newspaper companies have declared bankruptcy in recent months. The Rocky Mountain News has shut down. The San Francisco Chronicle is in danger of closing, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer announced on Monday that it would become an online-only publication.
Update, 8:30 p.m.
Dave McCollum, publisher of the weekly Las Cruces Bulletin, pointed out in an e-mail that the Bulletin has added five employees in the last eight weeks. In addition, he reminded me that MediaNews shut down the Lordsburg Liberal, which might have been the oldest newspaper in the state, within the past couple of years.
By way of disclosure, I used to write for the Sun-News, Tribune and The New Mexican.
Labels: Media
3 Comments:
I'm so very sorry to hear this.
Tracy
Maybe this economic crisis will help America rethink how we allow large corporations, consolidations and monopolies to dominate our economy. From AIG to Walmart, it's killing us.
If you look around this community, the majority of job losses are coming as dictates from out-of-state corporate offices seeking to improve their balance sheets, regardless of the impact those firings or closing have on local economies. Sportsman's Warehouse is a prime example--on paper, they are a successful and thriving business individually, but some accounting genius in Podunk came up with the number 23 as "number of stores to close to keep shareholders and executives rich", so bye bye Las Cruces store.
If the Sun-News was a locally/regionally owned, smaller entity, it could be more flexible and creative in how it managed this period of financial downturn. Even more important, it might be able go back to the business of providing excellent journalism to our area. Instead, the paper, and the citizens of Las Cruces, are being held hostage to the whims of others who don't give a darn about our community or our economy.
The Lordsburg Liberal was the oldest weekly newspaper in the state of New Mexico and the third oldest newspaper overall. It began publication as The Western Liberal in 1887.
Jason Watkins
Former Publisher, Lordsburg Liberal
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