They say the worst is over ? at least for the moment.
Forty-one Baltimore Sun Co. employees ? 16 from the 325-person newsroom ? accepted the newspaper?s recently announced buyout, and four others were laid off Monday.
The reduction brings the company?s downsizing effort close to its 50-cut target, said Linda Yurche, Baltimore Sun Co. director of marketing and communications. It comes at a time of seemingly stalled contract negotiations for the 480 Sun employees represented by the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild.
The guild?s current contract expires June 24.
“That?s all that?s going to happen for right now,” Yurche said of the cuts. “The [target] 50 was always an approximate number.”
Announced in April in the wake of declining ad revenues and an $8.4 billion deal to take private The Sun?s owner, Chicago?s Tribune Co., the buyout offered qualifying employees a week?s pay for every six months of service. It covered about 85 mostly senior workers at the 1,250-employee company.
“My story is not particularly dramatic,” said 30-year Sun reporter Eric Siegel, who took the buyout.
“It was a [personal] economic decision, a retirement ? not a journalistic one. I?m not even really sure what the overall financial position of the paper is.”
But with newspaper profit margins narrowing across the country and with further belt-tightening suggested by the Tribune?s $12 billion leveraged buyout debt load, Sun reporters may not see much financial relief in the contract in progress.
“We haven?t heard very much,” Sun environmental reporter Rona Kobell said of the contract talks, noting that management hadn?t even tendered a wage proposal yet. “They?ve been doing off-the-record negotiations. … But it is getting close to contract time, and we haven?t heard much.”
A Sun reporter with four years? experience makes about $48,000, according to the current contract, and raises for top-reviewed reporters ? all drawn from a capped companywide $334,000 pool ? amount to no more than $1,550 a year.
“Raises have been terrible,” Kobell said. “Our salaries have been going up very little, and our expenses are going up a lot. … That has been the reason why some people have left.”
Though happy with his Sun salary history, Siegel saw the downsizing?s possible snowball effect. “It?s always tough because [newspapers] are very much a people business,” he said. “When you lose people, it hurts a paper?s formal and informal news-gathering [ability].”
