Houston has its share of late-summer traditions — high school football, steaks on the grill, and layoffs at the Chron:
The Houston Chronicle offered voluntary buyouts to its employees today, with a goal of reducing staff by roughly 80 full-time positions, Publisher and President Jack Sweeney said Thursday.
Depending on how many employees request buyouts, layoffs might be necessary. When the reductions are completed at the end of the month, the full-time staff will be cut by 5 to 6 percent, Sweeney said.
A little math reveals that the Chronicle employs about 1,450 people. Less than four years ago, more than 2,400 people worked for the Chron.
Firing a thousand people must be good for editor Jeff Cohen’s golf game. His handicap currently stands at 8.6, down from 9 during last year’s layoffs.
Nice shooting, Jeff!
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13 Responses to “Chron lays off scores of workers, again”Search
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Well, there have been many new names on the bylines over the past several years, and I wonder how many of those writers are shared with other newspapers. The familiar ones seem to disappear one by one. The Chron would do much better if it didn’t lean so far left and thumib its nose at most of the readership. But then that’s their problem. Sure miss the Houston Post.
The Crummyicle has decided to do or die as a liberal rag. With that kind of decision making, its no wonder the newspaper is dying.
Grew up reading The Houston Post. Bummed when it came to a grinding halt forcing me to the Chronicle. Do love the feel of paper in my hands but only get inky fingers now if someone’s left one behind.
Forget getting any useful info from the Cliff Notes version they have online or leaving an intelligent comment on a story. Edited more vigorously than Pravda ever was.
Is LST hiring any of these unfortunate workers?
So instead of the traditional,’ let them eat cake!”, do we now start tracking the proportional decrease in Mr Cohen’s golf handicap based on the annual employee culling of Comical’s severance/layoff methods? The over and under is currently at 8.2 on Cohen’s handicap based on current layoffs. Takers?
It’s unfortunate the Chronicle has chosen to get rid of these people now. If they waited, perhaps John McCain’s program to train those who loose their jobs, would kick in and they would benefit. I miss the Post too.
Say what you will about their Democratic politics, but the Hobby family ran the best newspaper Houston ever had with the Houston Post. My personal bias began, as soon as I learned to read, with the indisputable fact the Post had a much better Sunday comics section.
As far as Cohen is concerned, I think of the commenter I quoted over at the Houston Press who seemed to be an insider. He said Cohen would not be disappointed to see the Chron fold because he wants to get to New York’s Hearst HQ to be closer to the seat of power. It’s gossip, but I wonder if it is true.
Ya’ know newspaper readership is down everywhere, the reason is the internet and that a lot of young people just don’t pick up the paper. I sorely miss my daily newspaper; I used to get the Post until it folded and then the Comical. I threatened many times to cancel my subscription after they would editorialize the front page. They did this almost every day. Then I started a tally sheet on Rhino’s VS DemoncRATS, as to obvious bias, I.E. someone gets in hot water and they put an R by his name but never a D. This happened 93% of the time. But after they politicized that young man form Pasadena, killed in the line of duty, I said NO more! I can do without. I now subscribe to the Wall Street Journal on Line, it’s much cheaper and has a lot of good info. But to make a short story long, all papers are down, but a RAG like the Comical could hold on to a lot more customers like me if they’d just TRY to be objective and hide their bias. But they just can’t do it.
Anyone seen a list of the dearly departed as of yet? Yes, its easy to knock the Chron for being bad, I do it all the time on my blog, but their are a LOT of good, honest people over on Texas Ave. who do a good job of news gathering. I’d hate to see them go.
I nominate Lisa Falkenberg for the first round of
firingslayoffs. I’d be willing to bet she doesn’t even exist. LF is probably just Cragg Hines’ pen name.Heh. Alas, she’s real. She’s much easier on the eyes than Cragg Hines, but equally worthless as a columnist.
Actually, I’d prefer Hines. He at least tried to write about serious topics.
Some may recall that awhile back we asked readers to keep copies of the Chronicle that had been thrown, unsolicited, on their lawn.
Our plan was to organize a collective, midnight raid on Jeff Cohen’s house, where we’d all dump hundrends of unwanted old copies of the paper on HIS lawn… just “returning the property” to its original owner.
Now, somehow, that just seems mean.
Dont fool yourself into thinking that their recent link to all public employees salaries in the area didnt have something to do with this. In my division of 31 people, 19 of us canceled our subscrptions.
I’d like to know the number of canceled subs immediately follow that bonehead move.
And oh yeah, I dont care how you spin it Matt Stiles, I still think of you as lower than whale dung.