The Olympian

Cutting hours and possibly positions.

Miller announced the cutbacks in an e-mail to staff and later explained the company's buyout offers to 38 of the newsroom's 45 full- and part-time print and online employees. He said there was no specific quota or target number of jobs to eliminate through the buyouts, and he was unable to say what dollar savings the company must reach.

"Unfortunately, despite our progress, the economy continues to worsen, and we must reduce expenses further," Miller told employees in his e-mail, adding in person that it's something other McClatchy Co. papers have done since the June layoffs.

The Olympian cut 17 positions, including four in news and online operations, in June as part of McClatchy's elimination of 1,400 jobs corporationwide through voluntary and involuntary cuts. But those cuts were not enough in light of a worsening economy and falling newspaper revenue, Miller said.

This of course is not an isolated event, as the article explains.

The news industry in recent years has been in a race toward a new kind of profitability. As print readership declined and print-ad revenue suffered, online revenue struggled to keep pace, and that has become more acute with a weaker economy. Adding to the challenge for McClatchy was debt it acquired when it bought The Olympian and other former Knight-Ridder newspapers in 2006.

I don't like seeing our local newspaper go through difficult times. However, this newspaper is hardly local--it's a branch of a national conglomerate that uses the media outlet to make money from advertisers by selling trash to the readers. Thus, the customer, who is always right, is the advertiser, and we the reader are its product. I could not be happier to see that business model implode--I am looking forward to the same with television.

Someday I envision a world of user generated content where the people who read are the people who write--a much more democratic and cooperative approach to media where all voices are heard rather than only the voice of those who own the presses and their economic overlords.

We're getting there and there.