The largest Twin Cities, MN newspaper, the Star Tribune, announced this week that starting soon, they will layoff 100 more employees to recalibrate out of bankruptcy. Nine percent of the total reduction will be done by the end of the year, but 30 of the cuts will come from the Star Tribune's newsroom and those may take a little longer. This is just another example of the changes happening in the journalism industry.
I wrote early last month about the new website the University of St. Thomas created for all of their news outlets (http://www.tommiemedia.com/). It seems the Star Tribune is going to take the same approach strategy in hopes of growth. Editor Nancy Barnes told newsroom staff that she believes the newspaper will succeed in "reinventing" its business and that it won't diminish news coverage. "Newspapers have been struggling financially, but not for readers,'' Barnes said.
The Star Tribune's operating committee disclosed that the newspaper is redesigning its website in 2010 and will expand the amount and types of information available to readers as it works on a new outreach strategy. "The cracking of our historical economic model and the current Great Recession have forced us to move quickly to make meaningful and difficult adjustments over the next few months," the committee said in a memo to employees Monday. "We have tremendous reach. We actually have more readers than we did a decade ago, only some of them are reading us online or on mobile rather than in print" Barnes said.
It's been a rough decade for the Star Tribune, but I am curious to see what changes will be made to their website and if it will help increase readership and finances. I'm not sure if this is the solution to their problem and I understand that they're not sure either, that this is just a temporary change that will be made until they know what is the right path to take. However, I know the Internet news source at the University of St. Thomas is doing very well and is extremely popular among its audience.
As a broadcast journalism major in college, reader of the newspaper and a fan of traditional journalism I may not completely like the changes being made, but really hope the paper can pull out of their troubles. I'm very sorry for the Star Tribune employees who will lose their jobs in the coming months, especially the reporters, good luck.
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