McClatchy cuts more jobs

Internet division reduces staff 11%

McClatchy Interactive cut 16 workers, or about 11 percent of its staff, on Wednesday as the Internet division of The News & Observer's parent trims costs.

Ten of the employees affected by the move worked in an online newsroom that was a holdover from Nando Times, a pioneer in online news dissemination, said Christian A. Hendricks, president of the Raleigh division.

The other six wrote code, did business development and performed other functions, he said.

McClatchy Interactive is owned by The McClatchy Co., which is based in Sacramento, Calif., and provides online services for the publisher's newspapers. It hosts their Web sites, for instance, and chooses vendors for new features.

Paring the division appears to contrast with McClatchy's effort to boost its online business. But Hendricks said the decision was driven by competition and business realities.

The McClatchy Interactive newsroom filtered and repackaged national and international wire stories for McClatchy's newspaper Web sites. Employees also generated original work, such as interactive features, and coordinated coverage among the newspapers for special events.

Automated content

"That particular line of business is covered by a lot of other people," he said. "It wasn't really driving a whole lot of traffic to our sites, and the pages that were being delivered weren't delivering a whole lot of revenue to us."

McClatchy Interactive will continue to provide similar content to McClatchy's newspaper Web sites but through automated processes, Hendricks said.

The job cuts mark the second staff changes for the online division in recent weeks. In August, McClatchy sold its Real Cities Network to Centro, a Chicago online media planner. That sale affected about 30 workers in Raleigh -- some did not get jobs with the new company.

McClatchy Interactive now employs 135, Hendricks said.

McClatchy is trying to cut costs and eliminate operations that aren't central to its business as it contends with a deep advertising slump. On Tuesday, the company said it is cutting 1,150 jobs -- the second broad staff reduction in three months.

In June, McClatchy cut about 1,400 jobs.

So far this year, employment at The News & Observer Publishing Co., which includes The Chapel Hill News, The Cary News and other papers, has declined by more than 100. The N&O has also combined sections to reduce newsprint.