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Paper scratches 40 jobs
Soft real estate market impacts ad revenue
| Wednesday, Jun 27 2007 9:28 AM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Jun 26 2007 6:48 PM
A steep but cyclical decline in real estate advertising has forced The Bakersfield Californian to eliminate 40 positions, 10 of them through layoffs, company President and CEO Richard Beene announced Tuesday.
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The layoffs include four newsroom positions and will involve closing the newspaper's one-man Sacramento bureau.
Tuesday's announcement follows a hiring freeze that allowed management to limit the layoffs to 10.
Despite the cutbacks, the company hopes to fill seven positions in areas including information technology and new product development. Unfortunately, Beene said, these jobs involve a level of specialization that the laid-off employees may not possess.
"Even with the elimination of these 40 jobs," Beene said, "we are creating new ones as we move forward."
Publisher Ginger Moorhouse lamented the loss of the 40 positions, or 12.5 percent of her staff, saying, "It is really hard to make decisions like these, but I am confident The Bakersfield Californian will have a great future in our market."
Between 2004 and 2006, The Californian enjoyed strong profits largely because of an "exploding real estate market," Beene said. But recently, real estate agents, home builders and others in the industry have scaled back their advertising, he said. The real estate market is not expected to rebound until 2009 at the earliest, he said.