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PINK SLIPS

The Courant Takes Zell’s Bitter Pill

By Peter Mantius

pmantius@HartfordBusiness.com

06/30/08

Photo/AP, Charles Rex Arbogast

Billionaire real estate developer Sam Zell comments on his purchase of The Tribune Co. at a Chicago press conference in December.

Battling an economic “perfect storm,” the new owners of The Hartford Courant are committed to slashing the newsroom staff by 25 percent and “right-sizing” the paper in a way that could jeopardize its 243-year-old bond with readers, analysts said.

Nearly 60 editorial jobs will go through buyouts and layoffs by the end of July.

And by September, the paper will undergo a thorough makeover as it trims its weekly news page count to 206 from 273 and adds a new lineup of maps, lists, charts and shorter stories.

Newspaper analysts said it’s too early to tell whether the abrupt changes will prove to be a healthy step in the evolution of the newspaper into a product that more thoroughly meshes with the online world or a shock to traditional readers that hits circulation figures.

“There’s a big risk of disorientation, particularly in a market like Hartford that likes its paper the way it is,” said Richard Hanley, assistant professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University. “The corporate folks can come up with a new look, but it’s going to be up to the readers.”

Hanley said it seems likely that the Chicago-based Tribune Co. is dictating “the template” for the changes while allowing “minor flourishes” to develop organically from The Courant staff.

But Doreen Madden, marketing director of The Courant, said the Hartford people will drive the makeover, led by Managing Editor Barbara T. Roessner. “We’re handling that in-house,” Madden said of the makeover.

An internal memo from Roessner that circulated last week floated the idea of eliminating both the Business and Connecticut sections, with news from them both moving to the A section. Stock tables would go to the paper’s Web site.

In any case, the Tribune’s move to cut its news pages by 25 percent and alter the news-advertising ratio from two-to-one to one-to-one “is fairly radical,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. “That kind of ratio went out years ago when papers went to [advertising] inserts.”

A Major Question

But he said the Tribune’s radical changes may be called for, given the current economic conditions. “It’s still open to question whether they’re Philistines who don’t know what they’re doing or whether shaking things up is what’s needed,” Edmonds said.

There’s no question that economic pressures are weighing heavily on The Tribune Co., since real estate magnate Sam Zell acquired it for $8.2 billion in a leveraged buyout in December. The company also owns The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Newsday, The Orlando Sentinel and The Baltimore Sun, among other newspaper properties.

“In retrospect, they paid too much for it,” Edmonds said. “The Trib guys are in a position where they’re not earning enough to pay their debt.”

It’s that crushing debt load that creates the economic “perfect storm,” according to Edward Atorino, a media analyst with The Benchmark Co., a brokerage firm in New York City.

Atorino said an “unprecedented collapse” in advertising revenues has hit newspapers nationwide. The automobile, real estate and retail sectors have all cut back substantially, while classified advertising revenues have swooned and energy costs have skyrocketed.

“The leverage buyout has only added to their [The Courant’s] misery,” Atorino said. “Your margin for error is reduced by all that debt and interest expense.”

Industry-Wide Problems

On the other hand, newspapers across the country are having similar problems. JRC Corp., which owns the New Haven Register and many other small Connecticut newspapers, is on the brink of bankruptcy, Atorino said, in large part because it took on heavy debt to build a new printing plant in Michigan.

“It’s an unprecedented environment for the newspaper business,” he added.

Edmonds of the Poynter Institute said one casualty of the Tribune makeover may be investigative reporting. The paper has a history of in-depth reporting on subjects such as the war in the Middle East. Those priorities will come under pressure, he said.

Thomas D. Williams, an investigative reporter at The Courant from 1966 to 2005, agreed. He wrote dozens of stories on Gulf War illnesses that required extensive, time-consuming work. Williams said those reporters who remain at The Courant will be “under a lot of pressure” to meet the demands of investigative reporting and their duties under the new marching orders.

Edmonds said journalists across the country have had a wide range of reactions to the changes in the industry. Some, like the editor of the Orlando Sentinel, are putting their own redesigns on the fast track. Others, including top news executives in Los Angeles, Chicago and Ft. Lauderdale, are just leaving.

Edmonds said many of the nearly 60 experienced journalists leaving The Courant will make their way into academia, public relations and online positions.

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