Layoffs at The Star

[KCMax]

KC Star to go behind online paywall.

http://www.mcclatchy.com/2012/07/27/287 ... econd.html

Hello irrelevance.

[kappa]

The Star announced 12 people were laid off today.
http://mediakc.wordpress.com/2012/09/18 ... e-layoffs/

[flyingember]

KC Star to go behind online paywall.

http://www.mcclatchy.com/2012/07/27/287 ... econd.html

Hello irrelevance.

I won't be annoyed to lose it.

The website is full of trashy ads. They buy junk basically and it doesn't make them look worth paying for.

The good thing of this change is that to get people to keep paying they'll need to write more content you can't get elsewhere. This should mean more good journalism digging up the truth and less press releases and breaking news like "firefighter burns himself."

[KCMax]

KANSAS CITY STAR TELLS TWO REPORTERS TO DECIDE WHICH ONE GETS LAID OFF

The Kansas City Star has told reporters Karen Dillon and Dawn Bormann that one of them has to leave the paper, and they — not management — have to decide who goes.

“Dillon has seniority, so she has the option of taking it or not taking it,” says a KCConfidential.com source. “And if she does, Dawn gets laid off. Dawn’s a great person but I think Karen will vote in favor of herself because she’s got teenage kids at home.

Happy holidays!

[kboish]

Fight to the death!

[chaglang]

Welcome to the FanninDome!

[kigmee]

KANSAS CITY STAR TELLS TWO REPORTERS TO DECIDE WHICH ONE GETS LAID OFF

The Kansas City Star has told reporters Karen Dillon and Dawn Bormann that one of them has to leave the paper, and they — not management — have to decide who goes.

This makes me angry. I'm ashamed now that I renewed my subscription this month.

[KCMax]

Two more departures, although willing departures. Columnist Steve Kraske is quitting to teach full-time at UMKC, and Chiefs beat writer Adam Teicher is leaving to write about the Chiefs for ESPN.

[loftguy]

When did the Star reduce the overall dimensions of the paper?

I dropped my subscription a year ago. This weekend, I picked one up to see how it was looking these days and the darn thing appears to be two inches narrower and shorter by the same.

Folded, it is equivilent to a skimpy issue of the Pitch.

[loftguy]

Duplicate post.

[Joe Smith]

Oops.

[Joe Smith]

When did the Star reduce the overall dimensions of the paper?

I dropped my subscription a year ago. This weekend, I picked one up to see how it was looking these days and the darn thing appears to be two inches narrower and shorter by the same.

Folded, it is equivilent to a skimpy issue of the Pitch.

In the newspaper biz it's called a cutdown. When the Pressroom moved to the new building for good back in '07, the Star and everything else they printed was on 50 inch cylinders. Divide that by four and you get your page width. Less than a year later they did the first cutdown of the cylinders and took them down to 48 inches = a 12 inch wide page. Around May-June this year they cut them down again to 44 inches, which comes out to 11 inch wide pages. The only reason to do a cutdown is to save money in the future.

You pay big now to have highly skilled/highly paid press technician's come in from Germany to do the work for 3 months and the result is you use less paper-per-ton, less ink, less water and all the associated chemicals you buy to add to it. You also buy smaller (thinner) plates. All that stuff is extremely expensive.

Here's one example

Printing plates are aluminum blanks with a special coating on them that come in fairly small boxes that you cannot lift without mechanical help. Last I heard, they cost around a dollar a piece. On the evening of November 10, 2012 the Star printed the A and B sections of the Sunday 11/11/12 Kansas City Star. Those two sections had 52 pages and required 7 out of 9 printing towers and 7 out of 10 reelstands. The Star used 3 out of 4 presses to produce the run. The run had 34 4/color pages, the rest were just black. Each press used 308 plates that had an image on it. They also used 44 dummy plates, which are blank. No image. Total plates was 352. Times 3 presses, they needed 1,052 plates. That's a lot of plates. Even though the plates cost around a dollar a piece, that price does not factor in the cost of the computers, machines, laser imaging, chemicals, etc... that was used to place an image on 924 of those plates, nor does it factor in the cost of the machines that have to make the crimps on the plates and the conveyor system that is needed to deliver the plates to the guy who sorts them out once they get to him and then places the plates in the appropriate spot on a table for the pressmen to retrieve and take back to his press and mount on a press cylinder.

Presses required by newspapers are huge compared to the presses in regular print shops. They are also extremely expensive to run and maintain. Which is why more and more newspapers around the world come to a point where they have to make a decision to either, A. Buy new presses, B, Figure out a way to refurbish your current presses, C. Find another company to print them for you or D. Close your newspaper.

Since the recession curtailed spending and the internet took almost all of their ad revenue, which btw, was primarily from the auto and home sectors, the Star has tried anything and everything to find revenue and keep the paper open. Just like you and me, they've had to look at what they were spending their money on and either stop buying things they could do without, use less of what they have to have or find what they have to have at a cheaper price.

If the Star didn't take outside print work from other companies like Dow Jones, the Pitch and many others who want to use the Star's printing, inserting and delivery systems, the Star would of closed 5 years ago. IMO. On the flipside, if the Star didn't print papers like the Pitch, the Topeka Capitol Journal, the Olathe Daily News, the Lee's Summit Journal, the Cass County Democrat and others, those papers would of probably went out of business.

The Star owns the best and newest newspaper sized presses within probably over a 500 mile radius. More than likely it could be in a 800 to 1000 mile radius. That is a really, really big deal. Orders for new presses have tanked. The Star was the last company in the U.S.to buy a KBA Commander press and KBA is one of the biggest players in the press business. Many newspapers around the country have gone under due to the fact that their presses were obsolete and they couldn't afford new ones or find someone else with high quality/high production presses to print their paper for them.

And that is the story of why the Star and everyone else in the country who can find the money are making their papers smaller. Spend big in the short term to save much more in the long term. Btw, press cutdowns are big business world-wide. It's not just the Star. Everyone who prints newspapers is doing it. If they're not, they're out of business.

When folks complain to me about the paper, especially it's size, I tell them the reality of how newspapers work. The money you pay for a copy of the Star does not pay for that paper you just bought. It pays for the people who deliver it to your driveway, put it in a box on the corner or drop it off at your local store. The ads in the paper pay for it's production. You don't.

While there is a money factor in how many subscribers the Star has because that number goes into what they charge for space on a page, the truth is if you had to pay the actual cost of that copy in your hand, you couldn't afford it.

One more thing.

If your opinion of the Star is solely based on what you read in the paper, you have a very, very limited view of what the Star really is. The people who write editorial's and opinion's you might not like are a very small minority of the people who work there. Make no mistake. The Star exists to make money. The people who run the Star and the company who owns the Star are not liberals. You may think because of what you read that to you it's the "Red Star" and they are all a bunch of socialist, Obama loving, commies, like some letter writers have stated. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Koch brothers might not like what papers like the Star put in their papers, but they would be very proud of how it's run. If the Star was not based in a large urban metropolitan area, the editorials and opinions would be much different than what they are now. I'd love someone to tell me of 1 single large circulation newspaper based in a large urban metro area that doesn't have a liberal leaning editorial/opinion staff.

[chingon]

I'd love someone to tell me of 1 single large circulation newspaper based in a large urban metro area that doesn't have a liberal leaning editorial/opinion staff.

The Wall Street Journal.


Otherwise, your post was pretty fascinating.

[Joe Smith]

I'd love someone to tell me of 1 single large circulation newspaper based in a large urban metro area that doesn't have a liberal leaning editorial/opinion staff.

The Wall Street Journal.


Otherwise, your post was pretty fascinating.

Uhhh. The Star prints that as well. It's not considered a daily metro newspaper. They don't print on holidays or Sundays. It's a financial paper with a smattering of news & lifestyle stuff that has been added to try to increase their readership and ad revenue.

[chaglang]

Oooh, I'll play: Washington Times

[Joe Smith]

Oooh, I'll play: Washington Times

Isn't that the Rev. Moon's paper.

What's their circulation numbers?

There are tons of small circ papers in big metro's. There's usually a political reason that governs the content and they cater to a much smaller and very specific demographic. A lot of them were started because some rich guy doesn't like the opinion of the dominant paper in that market/city/metro area. Hence, most folks outside of D.C. have never heard of the Washington Times.

[chaglang]

Oooh, I'll play: Washington Times

Isn't that the Rev. Moon's paper.

What's their circulation numbers?

There are tons of small circ papers in big metro's. There's usually a political reason that governs the content and they cater to a much smaller and very specific demographic. A lot of them were started because some rich guy doesn't like the opinion of the dominant paper in that market/city/metro area. Hence, most folks outside of D.C. have never heard of the Washington Times.

Ha, I didn't know that. That's funny.

Wikipedia had circulation numbers from 1992, which don't seem worth quoting.

[KCMax]

Oooh, I'll play: Washington Times

Isn't the NY Post conservative leaning as well?

But your point is well taken.

[chingon]

It's not considered a daily metro newspaper.

You didn't write "daily metro newspaper" you wrote:

large circulation newspaper based in a large urban metro area

As for daily metro papers:

The Dallas Morning News, The Orange County Register, The Oklahoman, Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the San Diego Union Tribune come immediately to mind.

The Post is very conservative, but not really the "paper of record" in any real sense. Ditto the Washington Times.

It is worth noting that something like 60% of syndicated columnists carried across the country are conservatives, in fact papers in which conservative voices outweigh liberal voices on the opinion pages outweigh the opposite by a 3 to 1 margin.

[Joe Smith]

It's not considered a daily metro newspaper.

You didn't write "daily metro newspaper" you wrote:

large circulation newspaper based in a large urban metro area

As for daily metro papers:

The Dallas Morning News, The Orange County Register, The Oklahoman, Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the San Diego Union Tribune come immediately to mind.

The Post is very conservative, but not really the "paper of record" in any real sense. Ditto the Washington Times.

It is worth noting that something like 60% of syndicated columnists carried across the country are conservatives, in fact papers in which conservative voices outweigh liberal voices on the opinion pages outweigh the opposite by a 3 to 1 margin.

I guess I should of went into greater detail and closed all the loopholes. Then again, you probably wouldn't of read my post and replied to it. So...