McClatchy metro daily cuts staff, salaries

The McClatchy-owned Lexington Herald-Leader announced another round of job cuts today and slashed all remaining employees' salaries. Oh, and the newspaper's editor-in-chief announced she is leaving to join the more stable, profitable world of academia. This is the third round of job cuts in the last year at the Herald-Leader.

The Herald-Leader's publisher, Timothy M. Kelly, claims the newspaper will continue to survive for a long time, but several questions remain unanswered. How many more job cuts can the newspaper handle before being forced to go Web only? How will the pay cuts affect the employees remaining on staff? What university is snatching up the departing editor, Linda Austin?

Last week, Herald-Leader columnist Tom Eblen, who served as the paper's managing editor from 1998 to 2008, wrote an outstanding column titled "Good journalism is too important to disappear". In the column, Eblen writes, "Print circulation has slipped, but online readership has soared." That really is the key point all newspapers must realize, and it should be what guides their future business models.

In other news, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went online only last week. The Hearst-owned newspaper is reporting that Web traffic since the transition has been encouraging. All eyes now turn to the San Francisco Chronicle. Based on reader input, the Chronicle says the majority of ideas for new business models center around charging for content. However; there is a move to make the paper a non-profit, with several investors coming together in a proposal.