Source:
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSeattle Times Publisher and Chief Executive Frank Blethen painted a dark picture of the newspaper's near-term future in a year-end memo sent to staffers Thursday, hinting at deep cuts without mentioning layoffs.
"The past several weeks your senior leadership group has been engaged in the most difficult and painful downsizing this company has experienced," he wrote.
"Until now we've been able to minimize some of the harm from the decade's downsizing. But, with the company at bare bones, these cuts will hurt deeply going into 2008 and the remainder of the decade."
... Blethen noted that The McClatchy Co., which owns 49.5 percent of the controlling stock of The Times Co., has twice written down the value of that holding.
The shares were valued at "well over $200 million" when the Sacramento-based company acquired them through its $4.1 billion purchase of Knight Ridder Inc. in June 2006, he said. They were valued at "only $19 million" last month, he said.
Read more:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/345186_newspapermemo28.html
Link contains the full text of the publisher's memo.