Eighty newsroom jobs to go at Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune is to follow the LA Times by culling newsroom jobs and reducing the number of pages in its printed editions.

Around 80 of its 578 newsroom posts are expected to be culled with further cuts appearing in non-journalistic positions.

The printed edition of the Tribune is expected to reduce the number of pages it publishes by 13 or 14 per cent each week.

Management began informing staff of the changes late on Tuesady, the Tribune itself reported.

This is the fourth round of staff cuts since 2005, when the paper had nearly 700 newsroom staff on its books. In real terms the paper expects to lose around 55 people as positions made vacant in recent months have remained unfilled.

Last week, The Los Angeles Times, another Tribune Company newspaper, announced that it would reduce the number of pages it published each week by 15 per cent anddo away with 250 staff roles, 150 of them from the newsroom.

Tags: Chicago Tribune, LA Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, Tribune company

LA Times creates ‘visual journalism’ department

The Los Angeles Times has integrate its print and web picture desks and video operations into a new visual journalism department.

The move is the next phase in the Times’ alignment of its web and print operations, which will see mergers across the continuous news desk and main metro news desk this month.

The new department will be headed by Colin Crawford, who has been promoted to deputy managing editor for photography.

“Combining these three departments under the umbrella of visual journalism will improve our ability to present multimedia storytelling in an even more engaging way, and take greater advantage of our outstanding photo staff,” editor Ross Stanton said in a memo to staff.

Tags: Colin Crawford, LA Times, Ross Stanton, The Los Angeles Times, The Times, web picture desks