Times acts to cut cost

The Johnson Newspaper Corp., owner of the Watertown Daily Times, is taking several steps to reduce costs and increase revenue to deal with declines in advertising volume during the recession.

Actions include:

■ Ten-day furloughs for all Times and Watertown-based corporate employees, with five days to be taken before July 1 and the other five before Oct. 1.

■ Suspension of the company's 401(k) match as of June 1.

■ Closing the Albany bureau by the end of April. Correspondent Tom Wanamaker has accepted a position with the Malone Telegram, which also is owned by JNC.

■ Elimination of TV Showcase following the Friday issue. Weekly television listings previously were removed from all but home-delivery copies. An enhanced, seven-day-per week TV page will debut this Sunday.

In addition, the Times has instituted a judicious hiring freeze, with, for instance, four newsroom jobs and one information technology job to be eliminated through attrition by July 1. Managers have placed tight restrictions on travel expenses and equipment purchases.

To increase revenue, the Times and other JNC daily and weekly newspapers in Ogdensburg, Massena-Potsdam, Malone, Canton, Carthage and Lowville will begin charging to publish obituaries later this month. They are among the last papers in New York to do so.

The initiatives were announced by John B. Johnson Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of JNC and editor and co-publisher of the Times, and Harold B. Johnson II, president and chief operating officer of JNC and co-publisher of the Times, in a letter to employees and a series of staff meetings Friday afternoon and evening.

"These decisions were not made lightly," they said in the letter. "Of all the options available, the furlough program and the suspension of our 401(k) corporate match will provide the fairest and least intrusive means to meet our immediate fiscal challenge while delivering a level of savings that protects the company and insures that we will continue to provide our readers and advertisers a quality product."

They said, "Much of the (advertising revenue) deterioration comes from a handful of major accounts where advertising decisions are made miles from the north country. The sales staff has done an excellent job selling to customers based in the north country and those sales are growing."

The Johnsons said the newspaper this spring intends to sign contracts for installation of computer-to-plate hardware and software that will improve production and reduce operating costs. They said managers of all JNC newspapers are analyzing staffing and procedures to identify where consolidation within and cooperation among papers is possible.

"Other cost savings and revenue enhancement projects must be pursued as we work to keep the organization living within the revenue it can generate." the Johnsons wrote.

Corporate officers took salary decreases for 2009. All other wages were frozen, except for increases mandated by union contracts for newer employees.

The Johnsons warned, "Unfortunately, these actions do not guarantee that further steps such as additional furloughs this year or next, permanent reductions in work hours, reductions in pay or staff reductions/layoffs will not occur in the future."

"The history of this paper dates back 148 years and our family has been actively managing the paper since our grandfather, Harold B. Johnson, began as an editor at the paper in 1907 and acquired complete control of the Brockway Company in 1932," the Johnsons wrote.

"We overcame the Depression. We persevered through several vicious storms and other disastrous economic climates," they said. "We will cope with this economy and will see better days."

"We have succeeded, persevered for years and years because dedicated, loyal employees have provided an excellent newspaper for our faithful and devoted readers and advertisers," the Johnsons said.

The newspaper industry has been impacted by higher newsprint prices and lower ad revenues, while traffic on newspaper Web sites has soared. Traffic on the Times Web site, watertowndailytimes.com, mirrors the national trend and has doubled since it became a free-access site 14 months ago. Advertising sales have grown with site traffic and the Web site is well embraced by local advertisers.

Publicly available data show that watertowndailytimes.com is the single largest Web site in the north country in terms of monthly unique visitors. Monthly unique visitors are a common measure used by advertisers to evaluate the different people who visit a site on a monthly basis. At watertowndailytimes.com, each monthly unique visitor stays an average of 40 minutes.