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Advocacy Group Confronts Tribune Co. CEO Over Newspaper Cuts

Posted on: Wednesday, 7 December 2005, 21:00 CST

By Mark Harrington, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Dec. 7--A civic advocacy group plans to "confront" Tribune Co. chief executive Dennis FitzSimons today to present him with 45,000 signatures protesting deep staff cuts at Newsday and other Tribune newspapers.

"We're letting corporate owners know that if they decide to abandon strong watchdog journalism in their business decisions, there will be a backlash against them," said Adam Green, civic communications director for MoveOn Civic Action, an arm of the grassroots online political action committee MoveOn.org.

The left-leaning advocacy group launched an online petition drive to protest the cutbacks, which it says threaten the newspapers' vital watchdog role as the company continues its quest for corporate profits. FitzSimons will be attending a media investment conference in Manhattan today.

Pointing to more than 650 recent job cuts at eight Tribune newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times and Newsday (where 171 editorial and corporate positions have been trimmed since October), the group blitzed the Internet with e-mails suggesting the moves were motivated by corporate greed and subterfuge.

"New Yorkers are being kept in the dark about why these cuts are really happening," MoveOn said. "Despite reaping huge profits, Newsday's corporate owners in Chicago simply aren't satisfied -- they want more, and they are willing to sacrifice good journalism to get it."

In a statement, a Newsday spokeswoman challenged the notion that the paper is weakening its mission.

"The media industry is changing, and we need to change with it," spokeswoman Deidra Parrish Williams said. "Newsday has strengthened its coverage of Long Island as we are now focusing even more of our resources on coverage of important local news and issues in the newspaper and on Newsday.com."

Todd Gitlin, a professor at Columbia University's School of Journalism, said the MoveOn effort has "the potential to be effective," but only if there are shareholders sympathetic to its message.

"We know how they think they can raise profits -- by hollowing out and crippling the enterprise," he said of media executives. "Maybe there will be stockholders who think otherwise."

Some newspapers have cited sagging readership, increased competition from the Internet and rising costs for their decision to reduce staffing to levels MoveOn suggests spreads remaining reporters too thinly to be effective watchdogs. But Newsday also was hard hit by a circulation scandal that forced it to reduce its reported daily circulation figure by about 100,000 copies and to compensate advertisers over the bogus subscriber claims.

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Copyright (c) 2005, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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TRB,

Source: Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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