Tribune Company, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and six other daily papers, will slash 700 jobs — on both the editorial and business sides — as it seeks to offset a decline in revenue and beef up its digital operation.
“The new operational plan is to change the company into one company with eight locations as opposed to how we operate now, which is eight individual and separate businesses,” CEO Peter Liguori said Wednesday.
The cuts will amount to about 6 percent of the publishing staff payroll.
In July, the company said it planned to spin off the publishing operation from the more profitable TV stations.
The publishing operation posted an operating profit of $151 million in the first nine months of the year on revenue of $1.4 billion.
However, ad revenue in the period shrank by 8 percent.
“The move anticipates a tough 2014,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst and founder of Newsonomics.
“Tribune is battening down the hatches, looking at another, similar high single-digit decline in print ads. Massive cutting is the only way to preserve meager profit.”
The newsroom will be largely spared in the latest downsizing.
“We are not going to be reducing any of our frontline reporters,” Liguori said. “Over time there will be some small reductions on the editorial side, but we want to maintain our best-in-class local journalism.”
The company, which emerged from a prolonged bankruptcy reorganization on Dec. 31, said the drive to put the advertising, marketing manufacturing and digital operations under common leadership is “aimed at offsetting annual publishing declines of $75 million to $100 million, without diminishing editorial content.”
In one of the more disastrous media takeovers, real estate developer Sam Zell purchased the company for $8.2 billion in 2007, saddled it with huge amounts of debt and eventually put it into bankruptcy.
Zell exited when the company emerged from bankruptcy.