Has anybody used this title yet? I haven't seen it, so I call dibs. The New York Times Company has announced that it will ax 500 employees:
At the same time, the company said it expected its third-quarter earnings to be lower than analysts predicted. It said it expected earnings of 11 cents to 14 cents a share. Analysts had predicted 25 cents a share, according to Thomson First Call. Even that was well below the 33 cents a share the company earned last year.
Ms. Mathis said the analysts' estimates largely excluded the costs associated with the job cuts earlier this year. Those costs, which were $12 million to $14 million, were higher because more people took the buyouts than had been expected.
The company also scaled back its estimates of revenues from advertising and circulation for the year. It said advertising revenue would increase in the low single digits; it had forecast growth in the low to mid-single digits. And it said circulation revenue would be flat to down slightly; earlier it said it would be flat.
Janet L. Robinson, the company president and chief executive, said in a statement that advertising for September "has been challenging and visibility remains limited."
This is corporate speak for "we have no idea what the hell has happened to us and we don't know what to do about it yet." I've listened to hundreds of conference calls from public companies and I understand the lingo. The stock is currently down slightly, but cost cutting is usually welcomed on the street, so we'll watch this for a while.
Obviously, revenue is down. There are many out here in bloggerland who are engaging in a bit of schadenfreude, as if this round of firings somehow portend the demise of the MSM and the emergence of bloggers as a substitute.
I wish.
I had a conversation with a journalist friend a few months ago who told me that if I was hoping for a paying gig, looking to print media was a mistake. Turns out he knows what he's talking about. So there goes my dream of one day taking over Mo Do's spot.
But for all but a very select few, those of us who want to get paid for writing should take Joe Gandelman's sober assessment to heart. The collective influence of blogs will probably continue to increase, but most individual blogs are either famous for some fraction of fifteen minutes or ignored altogether.
There's already a Glenn Reynolds, and we ain't him.
Comments