Tribune Says It Will 'Eliminate' Reporters Without Harming the Content

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By John Koblin

June 6, 2008 | 9:14 a.m.

How many more layoffs at the L.A. Times?

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They've got to be quaking in Los Angeles and Chicago.

The Times reported today that Sam Zell said yesterday on a first quarter conference call that they need significantly fewer bodies to make Tribune into a successful company. Tribune business people, led by CEO Randy Michaels, counted column inches produced by each reporter and realized that, hell, they don't need so many people! From the Times report:

Mr. Michaels said of the changes, “This is going to happen quickly.”

Mr. Zell said, “I promise you he’s underestimating the level of aggressiveness with which we are attacking this whole challenge.”

This is probably what Mr. Zell meant when he took his tour of the Washington bureau a few months ago and wondered aloud why there were so many L.A. Times reporters there.

He said that The Los Angeles Times produced 51 pages of news for each journalist there, while the figure for two other Tribune papers, The Baltimore Sun and The Hartford Courant, is more than 300 pages.

And when you've got your CEO making quotes like this, you know it isn't good:

Mr. Michaels said that, after measuring journalists’ output, “when you get into the individuals, you find out that you can eliminate a fair number of people while eliminating not very much content.”