The Minnesota Star Tribune announced layoffs and buyouts for 24 union employees on Monday as part of a broader effort to reduce its workforce.
The company announced aims to cut about 15 percent of its employees company-wide earlier this month.
Most roles impacted this week were in the newsroom, reflecting an about 11 percent reduction in news staff, according to Star Tribune spokesperson Chris Iles.
Iles said no news-gathering roles — like reporters or photographers — were eliminated. Around 175 people remain in the newsroom, he said.
“That still makes us, by a pretty large margin, the largest newsroom in the Midwest,” Iles said.
Iles could not immediately identify the exact total number of Star Tribune employees terminated this June.
Among those terminated Monday were copy editors, news assistants, print designers and team leaders — who oversee reporters, steer coverage, provide the first round of edits and are experts in their fields, according to Jeff Day, a Star Tribune reporter and co-chair of the Star Tribune Guild.
Day said the reductions eliminated the Star Tribune’s entire department of news assistants, workers whose responsibilities encompassed reporting, putting together box scores, administrative work, serving as reference librarians and helping with public data requests.
Union members are fundraising online to support affected journalists.
“The staff members targeted for these layoffs are part of the heart and soul of this newsroom. They are the definition of newsgatherers. They keep the newsroom functioning in ways large and small,” reads a statement from the Star Tribune Guild shared on the fundraiser.
A day after the newsroom reduction, the Star Tribune retracted an article on a boating incident “that did not meet Star Tribune standards for accuracy, verification and editorial rigor.” The article reportedly incorrectly attributed a quote and inaccurately paraphrased a statement from a source.
“A preliminary review indicates these errors resulted from breakdowns in the reporting and editing process,” according to the staff statement.
Iles could not speak to the situation.
He said the Star Tribune does not see the reductions as a newsroom “retracting” but rather positioning for long-term sustainability.
“We've transitioned from basically a legacy print institution to a digital media company at this point, with more than half of our revenues coming from digital sources and a significantly higher portion of our subscribers being digital versus print,” Iles said. “So this move is really about right-sizing the organization as a digital media company.”
