Dead Trees and Dead Trees and Dead Trees

The Bee offered voluntary buyouts to the majority of its full-time employees today and hinted that another round of layoffs is possible as well.

The buyouts represent the latest round of cost cutting at The Bee, which is facing a big slump in advertising revenue. Two months ago the newspaper eliminated 86 jobs as part of an across-the-board layoff ordered by its parent, The McClatchy Co. of Sacramento. McClatchy imposed a companywide wage freeze two weeks ago.

The MSM has been a dead sector walking for a long time. The problem is that the MSM doesn't exactly report honestly on the MSM. But eventually reality asserts all the immutable laws of physics like gravity. The Sacramento Bee has this breaking news:

But Bee executives said today they needed to make more cuts. The economic downturn has deepened and The Bee, like the rest of the newspaper industry, continues to struggle with the migration of business to the Internet and other media.
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At The Bee, Melanie Sill, the paper's editor and senior vice president, said buyouts were offered to about 200 of the 240 full-time equivalent staffers in the news and editorial-page departments.
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Ad revenue is down more than 22 percent this year at McClatchy's papers in California and Florida, compared to 16.5 percent for the whole company. McClatchy's total revenue, including circulation sales, is down 15 percent.

One ray of hope at The Bee, Dell said, is that the Sacramento area entered the downturn earlier than most markets "and there's a general belief that we'll come out of this earlier."

The parent company is further burdened by slightly more than $2 billion in debt left over from its 2006 takeover of the Knight Ridder Inc. chain.
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The Bee terminated 8.1 percent of its approximately 1,000 employees. About half were laid off, and the rest of the cuts came through buyouts and attrition.

Leveraged buyout, outmoded industry, reliance upon real estate revenues and unrealistic real estate asset valuations. And what about that quote above? "One ray of hope at The Bee, Dell said, is that the Sacramento area entered the downturn earlier than most markets..." You can't make this stuff up.