blogger interrupted

Tick tock.

During meetings with employees Monday, Publisher and President Terrance C. Z. Egger announced that full-time non-union employees will take 10 days of unpaid leave between April 20 and Oct. 4.

Full-time and part-time non-union employees will see their first $50,000 of pay cut by 8 percent and any additional pay cut by 10 percent as of June 1. …

The cost-cutting comes after a first quarter in which the newspaper’s ad revenues fell twice as much as expected. 

Egger said this two weeks ago.

Though it laid off a significant number of employees late last year, Egger said the paper budgeted to make money in 2009. 

Those budgets can be so unpredictable, can’t they.   I’m going to put the over under on a web-only PD at 6 months.  

UPDATE – Having thought this over, I am beginning to wonder if Cleveland will be the first one-daily major city lose the daily altogether, internet and all.  To my knowledge, this hasn’t happened yet in the US.  But if you are as clueless about your own bottom line as Egger seems to be – claiming to make money in 2009, then two weeks later cutting pay and forcing furloughs – that doesn’t bode well.  It suggests a profound lack of understanding of your current situation.  Which of course, is how newspapers got to this point in the first place.