The Palladium-Item is reporting that ten additional staff positions, including some in the news department, have been cut:

The cuts came from several departments, including news, advertising, pre-press, financial and circulation, Palladium-Item general manager and executive editor Mickey Johnson told employees. The cuts were a part of nationwide changes made by Gannett Co. Inc.

In a related discussion thread, online editor Jason Truitt discussed the cuts:

Was I blind-sided by the layoffs announcement? No. The furloughs in the first two quarters of this year were a temporary measure in the hopes the economy would quickly turn around. When it didn't, it was obvious more permanent measures would have to be taken. The only question was if it would be in the form of layoffs or pay cuts.

The Star Press of Muncie published an editorial yesterday thoroughly praising Richmond's Whitewater Community Television station (WCTV), and noting that it should serve as a great model for Muncie's own efforts at improving public access programming and use of media in general.  Larry Riley, who teaches at Ball State, gushed:

What has taken center stage the past year in Muncie, government meetings, WCTV offers in astonishing quantity: the Richmond Board of Works meetings, sanitary district board, parks and recreation board, Wayne County Council, Richmond City Council, the local plan commission, Richmond Human Rights Commission meetings. Both live and rebroadcast later.  I'm in awe.

The editorial was enough to make someone at the local Palladium-Item take notice, and they published their own praise today that echoes those sentiments:

We have noted in this space on past occasions that it is all too common a trait for people to take for granted that which they have in their backyard. All too often, it takes others to explain our assets...it is our public access television, Whitewater Community Television, that serves such a fine public-interest informational role, virtually without fanfare.

Congratulations to John Oak Dalton (past interview guest in episode #18 of the RNR) and the entire staff of WCTV for the recognition, and more importantly, for all that they do that is never fully appreciated.

WMUB, the NPR radio station based at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, has announced that due to funding issues, the station will likely soon be operated by Cincinnati Public Radio.  (Thanks to RNR listener Thomas Kemp for pointing us to the news.)  The changes are detailed in a news release by Miami, and described on the WMUB website, where they note that WMUB Forum on Friday, January 23rd will be devoted to this topic (live at 9 AM, recording repeated at 7 PM).  This comes only 7 months after they announced significant programming changes to be more competitive and to increase their strategic partnerships, but it sounds like the numbers still don't work.  Miami President David Hodge is quoted as saying that "the financial obligation of WMUB can no longer be borne by the university with the economic challenges we face."

It will be interesting to see what it means to have WMUB operated by CPR.  It could be a way for them to continue some or all of their programming with a new source of funding and other resources, or it could mean that 88.5 becomes a "repeater" for CPR content, and that the Oxford-based station ceases most operations as we've known them.

There are two pieces in today's Palladium-Item where its staff reflect on various changes taking place at the daily paper.

The first, on the closing of the locally-housed print press (announced in November), is a nice piece by Bill Engle that includes interviews and retrospective on the history of the press, and the implications of the change.

The second by executive editor Mickey Johnson is a detailed inventory of other changes to the paper's format, content and production schedule. These include rearranging and combining the paper's main sections, leaving out the "Viewpoints" page on Wednesdays, plans to have "a bigger Sports section and create a Local Life section that's exclusively local" on Sunday, and various new web-based features including a new "behind the scenes" blog by Jason Truitt.

Both articles are nice bits of transparency, and genuine acknowledgements of the realities of a changing industry.

The Palladium-Item announced today that it will be moving its printing operations to Indianapolis, eliminating 60 positions from its local staff.  According to the article, the decision comes after an evaluation of the capital investment that would be required to maintain the local press equipment, and other factors resulting from the "difficult economic environment."

The local press not only prints the Palladium-Item itself, but also serves as a printing center for USA Today, The Earlham Word, and several other publications.  While the article notes that delivery times for the Pal-Item are not expected to change, it doesn't discuss the future of these other publications.

The move comes as one in a series of changes scaling back the paper's operations, including staff cuts and an increased focus on online offerings that aren't tied to local offices.  While nothing is certain, those watching the newspaper industry in general and Gannett's practices in particular know that this trend could eventually spell the end of the Palladium-Item's publication altogether.

An article on the Palladium-Item website today announced the first live chat hosted by the paper's online presence, scheduled for 9 PM this Thursday to coincide with the Vice Presidential debate.  The chat service is powered by the site CoverItLive.com, used by a number of other prominent media outlets for chat services, including Newsweek Magazine.

The chat offered by the paper appears to be tied to event-specific, pre-determined time periods instead of available on an ongoing basis.  We've covered the availability of the always-available and free Live-Richmond.com chat room here, including in episodes 14 and 24.

If you try out this new offering on Thursday night, let us know what you think by posting a comment below!

The Gannett Corporation has announced that it will be cutting about 1,000 positions at its newspaper properties across the U.S. The Palladium-Item noted today that four of those positions will be lost here in Richmond. It's not clear if the positions being eliminated are related to news-gathering and reporting, circulation, or other parts of the paper's operations. It's also not clear if the cuts will result in existing staff losing their jobs, or if they will come in the form of position elimination after resignations/retirements.

The cuts will be happening on a fairly short timeline after the announcement, with notification to employees happening by today and the reductions in place by August 31st. According to a Reuters story, publishers across the country continue to cite decreasing revenues with no end in sight, as readers increasingly turn to the Internet for their news and information.

Update on 9/10: The Pal-Item.com website today carries a story noting that five positions have been eliminated instead of the originally reported four.

Earlier this week, WMUB, the NPR station located at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and that serves the Richmond listening area, announced some significant changes to its programming.  The changes include:

• All jazz programming including Mama Jazz will move to their HD2 channel, and will be streamed from their web site
• Each day’s Diane Rehm Show will be repeated at 8pm
• Each day’s Talk of the Nation will be repeated at midnight
• The BBC World Service will be heard at 10pm-midnight and 2-5am on weekday mornings
• The BBC World Service will also air from 8pm to 8am weekends
• Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me will repeat Sunday at 1pm, after Car Talk. Tavis Smiley moves to Sunday 2-4pm

The most noticeable impact for many will the be replacement of the sounds of jazz on weekday evenings with all news/talk content.  Given that the Mama Jazz show is a highly visible part of the station's offerings and that HD radio is still not widely adopted, it may change the station's listener profile significantly.

The changes are certainly generating lots of feedback on the station's weblog, and you add your own comments by e-mailing WMUB.

Palladium-Item Online Editor Jason Truitt has announced that as of today, the paper will be holding the comments posted in its online discussion forums to the same standard it uses for letters published in its print edition, at least when it comes to personal attacks:

"We've been having discussions at the P-I for a little while now about what changes we might want to make to the way we run these forums. We've heard the feedback from some of you as well as other people in the community about the level of conversation in the forums, and quite frankly, our own concerns have been growing...

Content for letters to the editor is held to a much higher standard in order to be published than forum posts have been. As of today, that will no longer be the case. From now on, whenever we have a question about whether a comment should be allowed to stand, the question we'll ask is, "Would we allow this to be printed in a letter to the editor?" If the answer is "no," the comment will be deleted from these forums. If the answer is "yes," the comment stays."

You can read Jason's full announcement and the discussion/reaction that follows. We interviewed Jason about this issue and others facing the paper in RNR Episode #22.

As a part of our end of year episode coming up in December, we're going to do a segment that looks back at the year's news coverage, and we need your help!

The topic is the city's Top 10 Most Under-reported or Under-covered News Stories in 2007.

(Read the rest of this entry...)