East Valley Tribune effected by layoffs
By Ashley TolandReporter, The VOICE
The East Valley Tribune plans on going through a dramatic change for their paper and employees.
The paper will publish just four days a week, lose its Scottsdale and Tempe reporting, and undertake immense layoffs. In order to reduce costs to meet the declining revenues, 142 of the Tribune employees, or about 40 percent, will lose their jobs.
The refining will begin in January of 2009 and close the newsroom in Scottsdale. However, it will continue to serve the other East Valley areas. These printed editions include; Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, and Queen Creek. The newspaper will be delivered on neighborhood driveways and made available in racks on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
Although, the print edition will cover two feature sections -one containing information about local news and the second covering sports-the other will cover entertainment and late-breaking news in the areas.
The Mesa-based firm will continue to cover online editions about the communities seven days a week.
The layoffs will be the Tribune's third round of this year, including many of the paper's senior newsroom staff. How is it that so many loyal Tribune employees be sacrificed due to the weak economy?
The paper wanted to give the employees a three-month window to search for a new job, although for many this is very difficult.
"We want to preserve this voice for the East Valley and position for success in the future, and we're hopeful these actions will allow us to do that," said Julie Moreno, the Tribune's publisher.
The affected employees will recieve severance pay worth two weeks' salary for each year of employment and are being asked to continue working into January.
The Tribune is owned by Freedom Communications, a private company that currently owns 110 newspapers, comprising 33 daily and 77 weekly newspapers and magazines.
As well as eight television stations and news, information and entertainment websites across the United States.
Freedom is blaming the general slump in newspaper readership and the current status in the economy downfall, and the real estate downturn as well.
Freedom also owns the Ahwatukee Foothills News and Daily News- Sun in Sun City, but Moreno said those newspapers are not affected by the cuts.
What does this say to the future journalists wanting to pursue a career in this field in today's circumstances?
Hopefully, East Valley Tribune will be able to bounce back will this immense amount of change and will prove to future employees that journalists are still needed in today's society.
