|
Dayton
Business Journal...
Dayton Daily
News to outsource work offshore, staff cuts likely
by Joe Cogliano, Senior Reporter
Friday, May 25, 2012
Cox Media Group — parent of the Dayton Daily News —
will send some of its advertising design and production work overseas
and expects to lay off some workers.
The move is part of a larger plan by the media company that will be
implemented at each of its four main newspapers starting this summer.
An internal company memo dated May 24 said the restructuring effort
will begin at its Ohio papers in August. The memo says offshore teams
will produce print and electronic ads, managed by Cox staff at each of
its four main markets.
Cox Media Group said it will use Chicago-based Affinity Express, which
does some of its work at centers in India and the Philippines, for the
outsourcing work.
It was unclear how many workers in the Dayton region will lose their
jobs.
Michael Athmer, communications director for CMG Ohio, said the move
will have an impact on the company’s employee count, but he expects it
to be minimal as the ad production group takes on work from other areas
of the company.
“The good thing is, the ad production group will be managed for CMG out
of Dayton,” Athmer said. “What we’re trying to do is take advantage of
better software and tools, and some of the more repetitive, less
complex work would probably go to the third party. But all the key ad
work, that’s more highly skilled and so forth, would still be done
in-house.”
He said the change is part of an overall restructuring Cox Media Group
Ohio that began last fall.
Cox Media Group expects to cut staff when it outsources design work at
its Palm Beach, Fla., newspaper starting in July and in newspapers in
Austin, Texas, and Atlanta this fall. According to the memo, it intends
to give at least two weeks notice to those being laid off.
“These decisions emerged out of CMG’s New Operating Model project and
were based on grouping common functions for efficiencies, adopting best
industry practices, and protecting the long-term future of our business
by reducing costs,” the memo said.
The move comes on the heels of long-simmering tensions between workers
and management.
Members of the Dayton Newspaper Guild — which represents more than 90
local reporters, photographers, copy editors, Web designers and
editorial assistants — held several public protests in March after
weeks of contract negotiations with the Dayton Daily News yielded
little progress.
At the time, the guild claimed the DDN was demanding union members give
the DDN the authority to replace professional journalists with
freelancers; eliminate seniority-based layoffs; and forgo merit-based
raises to union members, among other demands.
The guild has not had a new contract since September 1986. Instead,
employees have worked under “work rules” since 2008.
A guild spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment about
the latest announcement.
Cox Media Group Ohio includes the DDN, WHIO-TV, WHIO Radio, as well as
other daily and weekly newspapers such as the Springfield News-Sun and
the Middletown Journal.
In March, it announced plans to outsource the oversight of the
newspaper delivery, currently an in-house function — to independent
distributors starting in April. The company at that time would not
comment on the number of jobs impacted by the move.
|
|
|
|
