Two US publishing groups – Dow Jones and Knight Ridder – have announced that they are to make a number of job cuts in order to meet financial targets.
Knight Ridder, the second largest newspaper group in the US, is to axe 1,700 jobs, costing the group $75 million in redundancy pay-outs. Late last year, Knight Ridder laid off 400 employees – the new losses take the total cuts to 10% of the company’s workforce.
Meanwhile, Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, has also confirmed that it is to make further job cuts (see US Publishers Cut Jobs As Ad Revenue Slows), although specific figures have yet been released.
Advertising revenues at the WSJ are down by 39% year on year in the twelve months to date.
The consensus of a number of ad growth forecasts is that US newspaper revenue will achieve just 0.9% growth over the whole of this year. This is an average of predictions from Universal McCann’s Robert Coen, Jack Myers and ABN Amro (see Forecasts).
