Newspaper to offer buyout for employees

In an effort to streamline its operations, The News & Observer Publishing Co. will offer voluntary buyout packages to some employees today.

The package will be offered to 204 of the newspaper's roughly 900 employees, though only a small percentage of those people are expected to accept and leave the company.

Publisher Orage Quarles III said the decision to trim the company's staff came following a period of declining revenues and other factors such as the rising cost of newsprint and gas.

"It's almost a perfect storm of factors," he said. "We've got to get the organization to a size that supports the revenue."

Eligibility for the package was not determined by seniority, Quarles said. Instead, the company looked for positions that could be eliminated using technology, efficiencies or consolidation of jobs.

The affected employees will receive packets outlining the buyout program this afternoon.

Those who accept the offer will leave the company on May 23.

The News & Observer is not the first McClatchy Co. newspaper to offer employee buyouts. Other papers, including the Modesto Bee, the Sacramento Bee and the Miami Herald, have offered employees buyouts in recent months.

But Quarles said the decision to offer such packages is being made on a paper-by-paper basis.