The Daytona Beach News-Journal has fired nine more journalists, including its former longtime New Smyrna Beach bureau chief, its former Sunday editor and a former managing editor, as it continues shedding salaries in hopes of finding a buyer in the dying newspaper industry.
Just four years ago, the Mighty Metro was one of Volusia County's largest employers with well over 800 workers and a daily circulation in excess of 100,000. Those days are long gone.
These days, you can find the News-Journal stacked high in convenience stores and supermarkets as the ever-thinning product continues to lose revenue. Newspapers, in general, are on their deathknell. The Tribune Company, owner of the Orlando Sentinel, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year and the New York Times needed a cash infusion from a Mexican billionaire to stave off creditors. Whole scores of newspapers are in financial straits as advertisers move to online news venues.
Even to this day, corporate greed rules at the News-Journal, which has 25 "golden parachutes" set up for its top managers while 186 employees have been shown the door in the last six months alone, along with last year's closing of its bureaus in New Smyrna Beach, DeLand, Deltona and Bunnell.
"We lost talented friends and colleagues in the newsroom with this latest round of layoffs," said Don Lindley, the newspaper’s editor, according to a story published today by the newspaper announcing the layoffs. "We accept the economic reality with a determination to keep publishing the best newspaper we can for our readers."
Of course, the editor's wife, who writes a column once a week and is one of the top-paid newsroom employees, remains on the job, while others have been jettisoned from their jobs --the latest round, all older employees and several with children.
The Mighty Metro, down to 556 employees, squandered its assets on corporate pet projects, such as the Seaside Music Theater and $13 million in naming rights to the News-Journal Center, the Taj Mahal cultural arts center that was built with millions more in taxpayer money. This lavish spending led to a lawsuit with the News-Journal's minority partner, Cox Enterprises, which won a court battle that has forced the newspaper to be sold.
And so while the top journalists have been shown the door and the newspaper has increased its subscription rates, the public gets spoon-fed cop news, which even then, the News-Journal has shown its weakness on as evidenced by its pathetic coverage of the George Anthony saga.
Speed Weeks and the Daytona 500 are over and that means reliance on daily news and getting real stories.
Calling journalists you have fired "friends" is laughable, except that in this tourist-oriented economy, these journalists who have devoted years of their lives, now have to find a way to survive and feed their children. Remember that next time you put 75 cents down on the counter for news you can get for free online.