HR Issues

Leading Taiwan daily China Times plans to lay off nearly half of its 1,200 staff due to financial problems, union and newspaper officials said Wednesday, according to a Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) report. "In the face of a widening deficit and streamlining of the newspaper, a largescale redundancy in terms of people and facilities is inevitable," publisher Chou Sheng-yuan said in an internal...

The McClatchy Company, the third-largest US newspaper publisher, announced plans Monday to cut its workforce by about 10 percent due to a "difficult advertising market" and other challenges, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). The move will mean about 1,400 job cuts including "both voluntary and involuntary separations" and attrition, according to the group based in Sacramento, California....

Eight Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporations (ZBC) employees have been summarily sent on paid vacation leave for two months, letters written to them by the Head of Human Resources Benania Shumba in early June 2008 indicate, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) has reported. The eight include senior employees at the State broadcaster, Robson Mhandu (Television Production General Manager)...

News and information company Thomson Reuters will cut 140 journalist jobs by the end of the year. In an internal email to staff, the editor-in-chief of Reuters News, David Schlesinger, said having looked into areas of "natural overlap and duplication in coverage" between Thomson and Reuters the newly merged company had decided more than half of the cuts would be in Europe, the Guardian reported...

The New York Times confirmed Wednesday that it had made a limited but unspecified number of involuntary cuts to its newsroom staff in order to meet its goal of reducing head count there by 100, says an Associated Press (AP) report. Executive Editor Bill Keller said in a memo to staff that while the "overwhelming majority" of cuts came from volunteers accepting buyout offers, the paper had to make...

The Confederation of Newspaper and New Agency Employees Organisations on Friday said it would seek the intervention of top leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Press Trust of India (PTI) has reported. The confederation at its meeting Friday criticised the decision of wage board chairman Justice K Narayan Kurup to postpone the meeting and decided that it would seek the intervention...

A committee to protect editorial integrity at the Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday it will be more active in the search of a new managing editor for the paper after being blindsided by the resignation of Marcus Brauchli, according to a Reuters report. The committee, whose duties include the hiring and firing of top Journal editors, learned of Brauchli's departure after the fact, which it said...

The jobs of more than 30 Newsquest prepress staff in Sussex and Wiltshire are at risk with the newspaper publisher pressing ahead with plans to outsource positions to India, says a report in printweek.com. Newsquest Sussex, which publishes Brighton's Argus newspaper, confirmed that 21 jobs will be relocated to the Indian operations of US firm, Express KCS. The move, which would result in a cut...

The new management at France's establishment influential daily Le Monde wants to sack 130 staff, including a quarter of its journalists, to stem heavy losses, Reuters has reported. Eric Fottorino, who was recently appointed as chief executive of the Le Monde group, told staff on Friday the tough restructuring plan was needed to keep the paper afloat. "To reject it would surely deny us any chance...

The Seattle Times Co will eliminate about 190 positions by next month because of continuing revenue declines. In a memo to employees, which was posted on the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild website, Times Publisher Frank Blethen and Times Co President Carolyn Kelly said the changes will be part of about $15 million in budget reductions during the next two months. "We had hoped the expense...