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The Tribune Company is hoping “Uncle Jay” will make the news more fun or at least help ”small minds understand big news.” The interactive feature will appear each Monday on the Web sites of the Tribune’s eight newspapers and 23 TV stations to explain the week’s biggest news in a “unique and entertaining way,” the media company said today.
Check him out here.
Tribune Co. stressed a message of continuity in the wake of its Chapter 11 filing on December 8. Yet two questions went unanswered: When did the media company hire Edelman for bankruptcy-related PR and how much it was paying for the agency’s services?
The Chicago Tribune reported today that parent company Tribune Co. hired Edelman in November, paying the firm two retainer fees totaling $110,000. The agency applied $98,000 of that for incurred fees and expenses by December 14, according to the Tribune.
What else goes into bankruptcy-related PR aside from reassuring employees, advertisers, and other key groups? For one, making sure that people know the lights are staying on.
Among its duties counseling Tribune Co. after its December 8 Chapter 11 , Edelman is engaging stakeholders about real-estate matters, according to Jeff Zilka, EVP at the agency.
“People managing the facilities need to know [if the company is] continuing to pay the rent, the utilities,” he said.
Zilka added that engaging an employee base comprised mostly of cynical journalists has its challenges, as well.
“What makes Tribune such an interesting engagement is that is a national news organization, and many of the journalists are pretty cynical, so how you communicate with a high degree of honesty and transparency is important,” he told PRWeek. “You know that every communication will immediately be put on the Web.”
Tribune Co. CEO, and resident quote machine, Sam Zell detailed the future of his newspaper chain - operator of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and others - during a conference call with reporters on July 23.
Here’s how Tribune’s newspapers covered it:
The Tribune Co. cuts continue. Management of the flagship Chicago Tribune began telling staffers on July 8 that it will cut 80 of the current 578 newsroom positions by the end of next month, as well as at least 13% of pages published per week. The only semblance of a silver lining is that management will only have to trim between 55 and 58 positions because it did not replace other recently departed employees.
Elsewhere at Tribune Co. newspapers, the Baltimore Sun, announced it will eliminate its standalone business section. Last week, the Los Angeles Times disclosed that it will cut 250 jobs.
Another Tribune Co. newspaper will suffer a round of job cuts at least as bad as those announced June 25 at the Hartford Courant.
Baltimore Sun publisher Timothy Ryan told employees that the newspaper, and its community publications, will reduce its workforce through buyouts, layoffs, attrition, and closing open positions. The majority of cuts will occur in the newsroom.
The Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, the union representing 400 employees in various departments, told Sun reporter Lorraine Mirabella that 55 to 60 newsroom jobs are on the chopping block.
Meanwhile, the number of job cuts – 57 – at the Courant had to come as a surprise to many staffers, especially since Tribune COO Randy Michaels the newspaper earlier this month, along with the Sun, as two of the company’s more productive outlets. Employees at newspapers that Michaels said were less productive, such as the Los Angeles Times, have to be wondering what’s in store for them.
Details are emerging about how the Tribune Co.’s planned sweeping changes will affect individual media outlets.
At the Hartford Courant, editor Clifford Teutsch told staffers to gird themselves for heavy cuts, according to a memo acquired by Poynter’s Jim Romanesko.
Weekly pages will drop from 273 to 206, and the newspaper will cut 57 jobs, dropping the number of positions from 232 to 175, according to Teutsch, who acknowledged the changes may be “life changing for some” and “a shock.”
Few reporters and editors are safe. The Courant is offering voluntary buyouts to its entire news staff, except for Web personnel. Seniority will not be a determining factor in who goes and who stays. Subsequent layoffs are expected, according to the memo.
Time isn’t on the side of the Courant’s staff, either. Staffers have until July 9 to decide whether or not to apply for a buyout. And while Teutsch says that “the decision about whether to seek a buyout will depend on knowing how the Courant will change,” he also concedes that Tribune’s “vision for the new paper will be clearer, but not fully formed by July 9.”
On Sunday the Orlando Sentinel gave newspaper readers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and other metropolitan areas a of what their dailies might look like later this year.
Showing off what might be the most anticipated newspaper redesign in years, the Sentinel released a graphic-heavy paper, complete with shorter reports, top story roundups, and blog summaries, in line with Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell’s vision for the company. Read more »
Chicago Tribune publisher Scott Smith says he’s leaving the newspaper, just a week after Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell and COO Randy Michaels disclosed sweeping changes in store for its newspapers, including redesigns and staff and content cuts. Read more »
In one of what is sure to be many commentaries on Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell’s planned personnel and content cuts for his 12 newspapers, the Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson compares the real estate mogul’s influence on Los Angeles – home of the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times – to that of the Bloods, Crips, and Mexican mafia.
However, if PR professionals are wondering how the newspaper landscape will change if major metropolitan dailies enact production-based cuts, Meyerson makes a good point about Tribune’s column-inch-centric method of deciding.
If the [Washington] Post’s Dana Priest and Anne Hull, who spent months uncovering the scandalous conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and whose reporting not only won a Pulitzer but caused a shake-up in the Army’s treatment of wounded veterans, had been subjected to the Zellometer productivity index, they’d be prime candidates for termination.
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