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Topic: Memos Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 7/28/2008 10:49:02 AM
Title: Press-Enterprise publisher's memo
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
FROM: [Riverside, CA Press-Enterprise publisher] Ron Redfern
TIME: 6 a.m. PST

Dear Colleagues,

Today, as you know, our chairman, Robert Decherd, announced a number of initiatives that A. H. Belo Corporation is undertaking in response to the current adverse business environment that the newspaper industry is struggling with in this fast-changing media environment.

At our recent town hall meetings in June we shared with you the challenges that the current economic climate continues to have on our business here in the Inland region of Southern California. Because of our dependence on housing and construction, we have been hit worse than most newspapers across the country. However, our sister newspapers, The Dallas Morning News and The Providence Journal, are experiencing similar performance struggles as a result of this downturn.
Thanks to your efforts over the past 18 months we have been successful in making significant improvements to our business operations that have reduced expenses without compromising the quality of our products. However, as we noted in our town hall sessions, these improvements have not outpaced the declines we continue to experience in classified ad revenues nor the significant increases in newsprint prices.

Unfortunately, the outlook for the foreseeable future over the next 12 to 18 months continues to remain bleak for our business, particularly on the revenue front.

Consequently, as Jim Moroney announced today, the Corporation, and thus our Company, must continue to look for ways to reduce overall expenses. One of the steps announced directly affects all of us as fellow employees here at the Press-Enterprise Company. The Corporation is making a voluntary severance offer to many of the employees in A. H. Belo's Companies. As noted in the communications you received today, this voluntary program will provide enhanced severance benefits as well as outplacement services and a COBRA opportunity for eligible employees who elect to accept it and whose acceptance is confirmed by our Company.

This offer is being made to a large number of employees possible across the Company. It is our hope that this offer will encourage a substantial voluntary workforce reduction within the Company. Should that not occur, the Company will need to implement an involuntary reduction in force with a lesser severance package than the voluntary severance offer. However, if more eligible employees accept the offer than business conditions allow, the actual number of eligible employees allowed to participate in the voluntary severance program will be determined on a first come, first served basis.

In addition to the initiatives that are being announced at the corporate level, we find it is necessary for the Company to undertake additional actions locally to further reduce expenses here as well. As was mentioned at our June meetings, we have been evaluating a number of options to do this. Over the next three months we will be implementing several of them, a few of which are noted below:

· We will be implementing action plans to further conserve newsprint and reduce distribution and circulation expenses. These will include reducing our current web width from 48" to 46," cutting back circulation in the Desert, and moving NIE from print to solely an online service. These initiatives and others will provide significant cost savings.
· On the news and content side for print and online we will be reducing syndicate and wire services, consolidating business content resources, and continuing to rethink entertainment content as well as structural changes in news and online we might make to reduce expenses and maintain optimum focus on local news coverage.
· We will be making changes in page layout and ad production, and realigning our production workflow to extend ad deadlines to reduce expenses and provide more selling time to capture additional revenue on a daily basis. And we will be looking at outsourcing more functions. /CONTINUED

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