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The cuts represent between 5.5 percent and 6 percent of the newspaper’s total employees. Sara L. Wilkins, a spokeswoman for Journal Sentinel Inc., said the company was still talking with the affected employees and could not say how many newsroom jobs would be lost.
Amy Rinard, president of the Milwaukee Newspaper Guild, which represents workers at the paper, said editor Martin Kaiser told them Wednesday afternoon that 22 newsroom employees had been approved for buyouts.
“It looks like everyone who applied from the newsroom was approved,” Rinard said.
The publisher of the state’s largest newspaper had expected 35 to 50 people to accept the buyouts when the program was announced in early October.
It had warned that if too few employees took the voluntary buyouts, some could be forced and severance pay and benefits packages would not be as big.
Full-time employees with 10 years or more service were eligible for the package, which includes severance pay and health care benefits.
The buyouts will be effective Nov. 15. Employees had until Oct. 26 to decide. The buyouts will result in a fourth quarter charge of $3 million to $3.3 million, the company said. But they will mean savings of between $3.9 million and $4.3 million annually starting in 2008.
Newsroom employees taking the buyout were eligible for two weeks of pay per year of service and two months of health care. Buyouts for employees outside the newsroom include one-and-a-half weeks of pay for each year of service and six months of health benefits.
Job reductions will be felt in all departments, Elizabeth Brenner, president and chief operating officer of parent company Journal Communication Inc.’s publishing group, said in a news release. She had said when the cuts were announced that payroll was the company’s largest expense and it had to cut costs to survive in the industry, which is seeing falling ad revenues and circulation.
“We thank our valued colleagues for their many contributions over the years and wish them well in their future endeavors,” she said.
The Journal Sentinel has more than 1,000 workers with 260 people in the newsroom.
Given the interest in the buyouts, it appears there won’t be forced cuts, Rinard said. But the remaining employees are worried about how their workloads will increase with the loss of jobs.
“The scaled down staff will continue to be sort of wary about where the quality of our newspaper and online products are going,” she said. “But we’re pretty confident that working with management we can sort of iron out some of these issues.”
The paper is owned by Journal Communications Inc. and published by Journal Sentinel Inc.
Shares of Journal Communications fell 51 cents, or 5.94 percent, to close at $8.07 Wednesday, marking a new 52-week low.
The paper’s circulation, like others across the industry, has been slipping. Average daily circulation for the Journal Sentinel, Monday through Friday, was 220,676 for the first six months of the year, down 4.4 percent from the same period last year. Sunday circulation was 390,840, down 2.6 percent from the same time last year.
Journal Communications publishes 46 community newspapers and shoppers in Wisconsin and Florida. The company also owns and operates 35 radio stations and 10 television stations in 12 states and two television stations under a local marketing agreement.
