Further to my posting earlier on job losses at US wire agency the Associated Press, Gawker has been keeping a running total of job losses in both the United States and in news bureaux elsewhere in the world.
The list is being constantly updated as more information and tip offs become available.
The full AP layoff list can be found here.
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The Associated Press has laid off “dozens” of news staff as part of the agency‘s bid to reduce staffing costs by 10% this year.
The moves come as the 163-year-old cooperative wire agency has grappled with falling revenues, mutiny from its members and well-publicised battles against search engines and aggregators that it accuses of making money off the back of its services.
While US news media was buzzing yesterday as first word of the cuts began to filter out, the AP — which prides itself on fast breaking news — was itself uncharacteristically slow in reporting what was happening.
When it eventually came, the AP story didn’t say how many staff were being laid off, but the News Media Guild, which represents around 1,300 employees in the US, said as of Tuesday evening 38 Guild-covered reporters, editors and photographers had been told they were no longer required. It dubbed the day “Black Tuesday”.
AP said its cost cutting goal was set late last year as it prepared to lower fees for newspapers and broadcasters that had been hit by recession and the shift of advertising to the Internet.
The AP story said:
AP’s revenue is expected to fall about 6 percent this year to roughly $700 million.
Hoping to minimize layoffs, the AP imposed a hiring freeze late last year and offered early retirement packages to longtime employees over the summer. About 100 opted for those packages.
It’s been a tough year for the news business in the United States. Newspaper circulation across the country plunged by an average 10.6% in the six months to 30 September, while earlier this month the struggling Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other Tribune Co newspapers planned to do an AP cold turkey for a week as part of a test to see if all ties with the news agency can be severed next year.
The AP has promised members rate reductions averaging around 20%, but with its content perceived to be increasingly less relevant and the costs for the service harder to sustain, many question what the future holds for the news agency.
AP supremeo Tom Curley has been aggressively fighting (alongside Rupert Murdoch) giant news search services such as Google and Microsoft saying they should be made to pay for AP content. Curley says sites such as Google have reaped a fortune off AP articles, photos and video without paying fair compensation.
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Associated Press supremo Tom Curley will likely have gagged on his breakfast this morning as he tried to digest the news that the struggling Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other Tribune Co newspapers planned to do an AP cold turkey for a week from 8 November as part of a test to see if all ties with the news agency can be severed next year.
Chicago Tribune columinist Phil Rosenthal, in his blog “Tower Ticker” on the newspaper’s website, says the trial, driven mainly by the need to cut costs, will see the publications use as little AP content as possible and comes
almost 13 months after Tribune Co gave the AP a required two-year warning that it might drop the news service, effective Oct. 15, 2010. Tribune Co said at the time that it was keeping its options open while weighing what role, if any, the AP would play in its future.
Some content Tribune Co papers get from the Associated Press, such as sports statistics, will still be published during the experiment. The company also said that if the AP is the only available source for a report considered vital, it will use that AP coverage. But the company wants to see to what kind of void the absence of AP stories and photos would have.
AP is a not-for-profit cooperative with more than 4,000 employees working in more than 240 news bureaux worldwide. It is owned by its 1,500 US daily newspaper members that elect a board to direct the business.“The Associated Press has been working with all members of the cooperative, including Tribune Co, to ensure that the AP news report retains its value to member newspapers and their readers,” AP spokesman Paul Colford was reported as saying in a statement.
AP has promised members rate reductions averaging around 20%, but with its content perceived to be increasingly less relevant and the costs for the service harder to sustain, many question what the future holds for the 163-year-old wire agency.
Curley has been aggressively fighting (alongside Rupert Murdoch) giant news search services such as Google and Microsoft saying hey should be made to pay for AP content. Curley says sites such as Google have reaped a fortune off AP articles, photos and video without paying fair compensation. Now his choices are getting further squeezed and the old agency, like so many of its traditional members, needs to find new types of revenue to replace existing and possibly diminishing streams.
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