DallasNews Corporation, owner of the Dallas Morning News, announced Wednesday morning that it is offering buyouts that could eliminate as many as 40 full-time and part-time jobs — a 6% reduction in head count.
The company will offer buyouts to all departments starting Oct. 16, including the newsroom. In a press release, the company wrote the buyouts will help reduce expenses as it seeks to achieve profitability.
“This will still allow the news department the resources to maintain the same comprehensive coverage throughout Texas while helping to reduce overall headcount and non-headcount expenses,” the press release reads. “Throughout its 180-year history, the Company has evolved in parallel with the city, region, and state it covers. Today’s announcement allows for a dynamic, modern model to maintain and uphold that journalistic responsibility while re-investing in key areas across the organization.”
President and chief financial officer Katy Murray wrote in an email that the company does not have a target amount in savings it is trying to achieve. She added that until decisions are made in October, the company cannot comment on which areas it seeks to reinvest in.
The buyouts come three months after the DallasNews Corporation cut ties with Vericast, a vendor that allowed the company to produce print editions of its Spanish-language paper, Al Día, and its Sunday “quick read news” paper, Briefing. Al Día became a digital-only product earlier this month while Briefing was discontinued. The partnership with Vericast had been unprofitable, the company wrote in its press release, and exiting it allowed the company to focus on “its strongest and most promising areas of revenue growth.”
DallasNews Corporation wrote in an email to staff that 2023 has been a year of “revenue uncertainty” and the company has fallen short of its financial expectations despite being debt-free and located in a region of “unprecedented growth and favorable economic conditions.” The company has not had a profitable quarter since Q4 of 2021, and it ended its most recent quarter with a net loss of $0.9 million due in part to declines in print advertising revenue.
Despite this, the company told staff that it has seen “positive outcomes” as it adjusts its digital memberships and shifts its focus from volume to pricing.
Dallas News Guild unit chair Maggie Prosser wrote in an emailed statement that though the buyouts are “unfortunate,” the union is “relieved” to have secured a contract that requires the company to offer buyouts before laying off members. Journalists at the Morning News unionized in October 2020, months after the company laid off 43 staff members, nearly half of whom were in the newsroom. The union ratified its first contract earlier this year in June.
Leah Waters, an equity reporter at the Morning News and the guild’s former unit chair, said that she and her colleagues will likely review their new contract in preparation for October, when the company will make the buyouts available.
“It’s obviously no secret the local newsrooms are struggling with an erosion of their market and erosion of their ability to advertise and monetize information,” Waters said. “The newsrooms who have suffered under uncertainty for years that unionize finally find not certainty, but a peace that a contract gets them. They are able to at least know how the process will take place.”
This has been a tough year for many newsrooms. Just a few weeks ago, nonprofit outlet The Texas Tribune conducted the first layoffs in its 14-year history. Other outlets that have made cuts this year include ESPN, Bloomberg, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, NPR and The Washington Post. Murray said the last time DallasNews Corporation offered wide scale buyouts was April 2021.
This article was updated to include an email from the company to staff and quotes from two Morning News reporters. Poynter contributor Amaris Castillo contributed reporting.
