McClatchy to slash staff, offering buyouts to employees

The McClatchy Company offered buyouts to roughly 10 percent of its employees at the 29 newspapers it owns across the U.S. Friday, the Miami New Times reported.

The buyouts are reportedly voluntary.

The New Times obtained emails from CEO Craig Forman to staff at the Miami Herald, one of McClatchy’s largest subsidiaries.

{mosads}”This will be a one-time opportunity,” the email reportedly reads. “We do not anticipate another.”

Forman stressed that the buyout was optional.

“It is important to us that [employees] are empowered to make the next steps on their career path,” he wrote, also referencing, “driving our company to a functionally based organizational structure in targeted strategic areas.”

McClatchy papers include the Herald, Kansas City Star, Idaho Statesman, Fresno Bee, and Charlotte Observer.

The company did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment on the buyouts.

In August, McClatchy laid off approximately 140 employees, or 3.5 percent of their staff.

The cuts at the company’s newspapers come as the staff has been reduced at many major publications recently.

Vice Media will lay off 10 percent of its employees, the company announced Friday.

BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Mic all made staff cuts in January.

Many critics, including prominent Democratic lawmakers, are putting the blame on Facebook and Google because of their dominance of the digital ad market.

The tech giants combined to rake in about 58 cents of every dollar spent on online advertising in 2018, according to an analysis by eMarketer.