Dec. 12, 2008 — The Virgin Islands Daily News announced Thursday it would lay off 10 employees and eliminate currently vacant positions as part of a "restructuring" program. The cuts are part of an alarming cutback trend at other news outlets.
An article in the newspaper explaining the cuts did not say what departments were being scaled back, but Daily News Publisher Jason Robbins implied they were "non-essential."
At one point this year, a Daily News staffer said the newspaper's St. Croix office had only one full-time reporter, a statistic that the Source could not immediately confirm.
The Daily News article explaining the cuts said the newspaper's parent company, Scranton, Penn.-based Times-Shamrock Communications, would ensure the terminated employees received their due benefits.
Times-Shamrock Communications declined to comment on the layoffs either in specific or broad terms, deferring comment to Robbins, who did not immediately return telephone calls from the Source.
Large newspapers and media chains have faced similar cutbacks recently, on a larger scale.
Brent Cunningham, managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review in New York, said small-town newspaper readership will often notice staffing reductions right away. Large newspapers, covering national or international news, can scale back in certain areas, and their readership will simply go to another source for that news. But community newspapers tend to cover topics that aren’t often duplicated by other news outlets.
"It’s apples and oranges, I know, but in New York, you’ve got several daily newspapers," Cunningham said. When the New York Sun newspaper closed its doors earlier this year, "I’m sure there were some tears shed, but in the long run, it didn’t make a ripple," he said.
Deep cuts in smaller communities hit harder, however.
"There’s an argument to be made that some papers are overstaffed and there is fat to be cut," Cunningham said. When small papers try to stretch their resources too far, however, it can lead to "a certain superficiality of coverage."
Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, said small newspapers had fared relatively better in recent lean financial times because they don’t usually maintain costly foreign bureaus. That has changed recently and even news outlets with relatively small staffs are cutting back.
"The very recent news has gotten worse and worse for the industry," Jurkowitz said. "In theory, layoffs in a 40- or 50-person newsroom have a much greater impact than at the larger papers."
Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported Newsweek magazine would cut staff and pages . The Web site Philebrity.com reported the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News would lay off reporters, copy editors, photographers and graphic artists, as well as six positions in advertising.
The Gannett Company Inc. announced last week a 10 percent cut nationwide across its newspapers. The Chicago-based Tribune Company, owner of media properties across the nation, was granted Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this week.
Cunningham said some estimates show up to 6,000 news jobs have been cut in recent years.
Television and radio stations are not immune either.
National Public Radio announced Thursday it was laying off 64 people and eliminating 21 vacant positions, ending two news analysis programs.
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