The Plain Dealer in Cleveland on Monday laid off 14 newsroom employees as part of a staff reduction first announced in December. The 14, most of them reporters and all members of Local 1 of the News Guild of the Communication Workers of America, account for about a third of the unionized news-gathering staff.
One additional journalist will depart later this month. The company had earlier announced plans to eliminate 29 other jobs in May by shifting its page-production work to a centralized outside system. Three of those production staffers will move to the newsroom, however, reducing the net loss of jobs there to 12.
"Today, we share a sense of loss,” Plain Dealer President and Editor George Rodrigue said in a statement. “The essence of any layoff is that good people lose their jobs. We regret that, and we wish our colleagues well.
“In the near future, we will be refocusing our efforts to invest in deeper coverage of key topics that are of high value to our community. We will be sharing more about those plans in the coming weeks.”
Rodrigue blamed the cuts on the continuing decline in advertising revenue that has battered virtually all mass media, including television, radio and digital-first news organizations such as cleveland.com. A Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor statistics from 2008 to 2017 found overall newsroom employment dropped nationally by 23 percent and in newspaper newsrooms employment dropped by 45 percent. More than 2,400 media jobs have been eliminated so far this year, according to Business Insider.
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