Subject: Layoffs and Downsizing

• We've Got a Boat Show, at Least, and Terrorists Hate Our Flatulence

  January 15, 2008

• Hallmark's Latest Layoffs Come with Some Honesty

  June 5, 2008

• Funk Tells Cauthen to Get With the Program

  July 18, 2008

• An Annotated Version of a Note from the Star's Publisher

  August 25, 2008

• More layoffs coming at the Star

  November 5, 2008

• The real reason behind the Star layoffs

  By JUSTIN KENDALL Finally, we know the real reason for the Kansas City Star's decline. The Star's financial woes apparently aren't due to the bad economy, much less the industry-wide loss of revenue as advertisers migrated to the Internet over the last two decades, or the changing habits of readers who get more of their news online. Instead, the Star's dying from good ol' liberal bias, according to Kansas' new "fair and factual" news site. Monday's purge of 50 Star employees was just the lat

  November 13, 2008

• Attention laid-off Star writers: free blogs!

  By JUSTIN KENDALLThe Sunday New York Times read like a want ad for laid-off journalists.The Times reported that Six Apart is giving free memberships to recently fired journos and bloggers. But space is limited. Only 20 or 30 journalists will be accepted into the TypePad Journalist Bailout Program, which includes tech support, advertising revenue sharing and a spot on Blogs.com. A $150 value.The Times report says Six Apart VP Anil Dash announced the program on November 14 with a blog post: "Hello

  November 24, 2008

• Jason & Scorchers Drummer in Trouble (Health Care Blues)

  From a listserv I get. This one hits close to home, both because the guy got laid off from a newspaper -- none of that here at The Pitch, though, thank god -- and because, dammit, musicians need health insurance. Also, the Scorchers have played KC numerous times. -- Harper  Perry Baggs, the longtime drummer for Jason & the Scorchers, suffers from kidney problems due to diabetes, and spent several months last summer in the hospital. Scorchers frontman Jason Ringenberg and guitarist War

  December 16, 2008

• Hearne's Back!

  Clay Chastain addicts rejoice! You'll finally have an inside track on his -- and at least three other people's -- inner thoughts when former Star gossip columnist Hearne Christopher Jr. starts his new column at Sun Publications in February. Publisher Steve Rose confirmed the deal in a phone interview today.

  January 23, 2009

• Not a great way to start the week

  Sprint Nextel is cutting 8,000 jobs by March 31. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse made only one comment in the news release. "Labor reductions are always the most difficult action to take, but many companies are finding it necessary in this environment," Hesse said in the statement. "We continue to improve the customer experience and these improvements are reflected in much higher levels of satisfaction in customer surveys and in independent performance tests. Our commitment to q

  January 26, 2009

• Sprint to the Finish

  December 5, 2002

• Roo Barb

  December 12, 2002

• Size Matters

  December 19, 2002

• Party Raider

  April 17, 2003

• Star TV writer fears more layoffs

  Aaron BarnhartKansas City Star TV columnist Aaron Barnhart isn't hiding his fear of another round of layoffs. He's blogging about it on his TV Barn site. Earlier today, Barnhart shared his fear in this post about layoffs at Time Warner Cable.Having gone through three layoffs cycles in six months -- and who knows, maybe another one after tomorrow's McClatchy conference call with investors -- I can tell you this ain't fun.Barnhart hasn't been a quiet soldier. After the cuts in June, he started a t

  February 4, 2009

• Mark Zieman's bleak memo to Star staffers

  Mark ZiemanKansas City Star publisher Mark Zieman says a fourth round of layoffs is coming at the daily. The Star's Dollars & Sense blog ran Zieman's letter to staffers, and it's pretty bleak."At The Star, we are still developing our plan to address these expense cuts. Unfortunately, we know these cuts will include job eliminations. But we also are exploring several other alternatives to limit the number of layoffs. We will share these details with you just as soon as they are final."My sugg

  February 5, 2009

• Layoffs suck: Mike Parker, 37

  Layoffs suck. Take it from my friend Mike Parker, who's been laid off three times in four years. Parker started working at a major telecommunications company based in Overland Park back in 1996. (We've agreed to use thinly veiled euphemisms for Parker's former employers.) He started in Bethesda, Maryland, but bought a house in Lee's Summit when the company moved his operations to an office there in 1999. Shortly after Parker moved to Lee's Summit, he was relocated again, to the company's main

  February 24, 2009

• Best Rock-Star Meltdown

  October 7, 2004

• Five year study hopes to discover if layoffs make journalists sad

  Scott ReinardyIf any of the soon-to-be-fired staff of The Kansas City Star make it over to the Angry Journalist Web site to vent -- and lord knows they deserve to vent -- they'll see a plea from University of Kansas assistant professor Scott Reinardy to become part of his study. If they e-mail the j-school prof, they'll be part of a rigorous scientific process to test a bold thesis: Firing a newspaper's staff will change news coverage and depress journalists. Take a second to pick yourself

  March 11, 2009

• Layoffs Suck: Raysa Williams, 30

  Raysa Williams is a Paseo grad who studied theater and dance. She's been the victim of two layoffs in two years. She was laid off from her work as a closer for Nations Lending, a title loan company, in October 2007 but was out of work for only a month when the company suddenly offered her old job back. She took it, but in the month's span that she was out of work, she'd gone on several interviews. One was at Zep Manufacturing, where she interviewed for a job as an executive assistant. When

  March 16, 2009

• Chef Linda Duerr is looking for a job

  I was sitting in a coffee house yesterday and overheard a young guy tell the barista, "Make it a double, I got laid off today." Then I remembered that I had gotten a phone call last week from chef Linda Duerr of J.J.'s Restaurant on the West Plaza telling me that she had been laid off. I wasn't completely surprised by the news. Last October, I wrote about J.J.'s Restaurant suffering financial hardship because of the construction snarls created by the slow-moving and controversial West

  March 26, 2009

• First person: Black Friday at City Hall

  City of Kansas CityA dreadful budget outlook has forced the City of Kansas City, Missouri, to cut hundreds of jobs. Someone who works at City Hall provides this account of what happened on Friday.It was ugly. People who have worked there a long time were laid off. The Capital Improvements Management Office lost 18 people.The reports say they were managers and clerical workers, but the people I know about didn't manage anyone or supervise anyone -- they just are in the "administrative officer" ca

  April 6, 2009

• Another round of layoffs coming at the Star?

  McClatchy Watch reported today that another round of layoffs could be coming at McClatchy, the parent company of The Kansas City Star, in June if the newspaper chain violates its debt covenants. But that's not all: Look for asset sales. Expect McClatchy to sell buildings and lease them back. And as more employees are laid off, the value of the product becomes degraded, causing more subscribers to bail. McClatchy's situation might very well be irreversible.If the Star goes through another round o

  April 8, 2009

• Broken Piggy Banks

  March 5, 2009

• Budget Safari

  August 7, 2008

• Hallmark cares enough to send the very best ... jobs to China

  May 15, 2008

• Thrown for a Bell Curve

  New employee evaluations and more layoffs mean it still sucks to work for Sprint.

  January 8, 2004

• Richard Thompson

  Thursday, January 16, at Liberty Hall.

  January 16, 2003

• Screwed by Sprint

  While the top brass parachuted out with millions, most workers got a brand new pink slip.

  November 21, 2002

• TERRY EVERETT QUIETT

  PAPER DOLL SPOKESMEN(S3)

  March 16, 2000

• Mike Farris & the Roseland Rhythm Revue

  June 18, 2009

• Hallmark cutting even more jobs

  ​Hallmark is cutting more jobs -- somewhere between 225 and 250 jobs by the end of the year, the Kansas City Business Journal reports.The cuts were announced yesterday -- hopefully in person, not in sympathy card form. No word on how many jobs in Kansas City will be lost.Add these cuts to the 750 jobs Hallmark announced in April. There isn't a Hallmark card that'll make these cuts easy to take.

  October 2, 2009

• American Airlines cutting 700 jobs nationwide, closing KC overhaul base

  ​More bad news on the layoffs front. American Airlines is shutting down its overhaul base at Kansas City International Airport in September 2010 and cutting 700 employees nationwide, according to reports this morning.KMBC Channel 9 has the letter to employees announcing the shut down and layoffs, and KMBC's Micheal Mahoney reports that 500 people (450 of them union workers) work at the overhaul base.Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill tweeted her feelings. My heart goes out to the great American Ai

  October 28, 2009

• Not to be outdone by American Airlines, Missouri cuts 700 jobs

  Jay Nixon dropped the ax today​Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced today that 700 jobs will be cut to make up for a shortfall in state tax revenues. Prime Buzz says the cuts are on top of $430 million in budget slashing earlier this year. Add that on top of American Airlines closing its overhaul base at Kansas City International Airport (and the announcement of 700 job cuts nationwide), and it's been a really bad day.

  October 28, 2009

• More layoffs coming at Sprint

  ​More layoffs are coming at Sprint Nextel. This time, they're cutting "dozens" of jobs in the wholesale division, which employs 575 people.There have probably been other layoffs that I don't recall, but in January, Sprint announced that it would shed 8,000 jobs Sprint layoffs is always a familiar story.

  November 4, 2009