Hearst Corp. Lays Off San Antonio Express-News Employees

SAN ANTONIO, TX — The San Antonio Express-News — the city's sole daily newspaper, owned by Hearst Corp. — laid off 14 employees in the newsroom, company officials announced Thursday while insisting the publication remains profitable.

Employees cut run the gamut from veterans who had worked at the newspaper for more than two decades to newer employees there for just a few years. Publisher Susan Pape blamed the layoffs on unspecified "economic factors" and a goal to combine resources at other Hearst holdings across the state. Sister publication Houston Chronicle has long engaged in such resource-sharing.

Pape insisted the newspaper remains profitable.

Nancy Barnes, executive editor for Hearst Texas Newspapers and the Houston Chronicle, told the Express-News staff in an hour-long meeting the company aims to maximize collaboration among the company's various newsrooms, the newspaper reported. Other Hearst-owned dailies include publications in Beaumont, Laredo and Midland.

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Despite such explanations into inner machinations — moves long in the making in light of dwindling readership numbers in the newspaper industry that was no secret to observers — the cuts came as a surprise to many. Newsroom cuts touched the writing and editing teams along with sports and news photographers.
Among those cuts were some of the newspapers most recognizable faces and best-regarded journalists:

• Peggy Fikac, a highly regarded journalist who longed served as the Austin bureau chief while writing a newspaper column for the Express-News, was among those cut. She previously worked for the Associated Press, where she covered the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards during both her gubernatorial campaigns, according to a biography on the Express-News website.
• Jeanne Jakle, a San Antonio native who had written extensively about local and national television, radio and other media for the newspaper since 1983. Jakle also ran a popular blog dubbed Jakle's Jacuzzi that was widely read. Despite the decided fluffiness of her offerings, Jakle is said to have consistently amassed the most clicks per article — competing with the collective clicks of the newspaper's unpaid digital version offshoot, MySA.com combined, one insider told Patch — from readers enjoying the lighter, yet popular, fare she had long provided.
• Zeke McCormack, who primarily covered the Hill Country since joining the newspaper in 1999.
• Robert Seltzer, the newspaper's public editor.
• Terry Scott Bertling, travel editor.
• Mary Heidbrink, an editorial assistant who had worked at the paper for ten years.
• John Davenport, a photojournalist who has earned multiple awards for his work from the National Headliners Foundation, the Associated Press and the National Press Photographers Association, according to his bio.
• Ed Ornelas, a fellow photographer, also got the ax.
• Mike Knoop, the newspaper's director of news research and archives at San Antonio Express-News since September 2007, was let go as well.
• Joe Abel, a systems editor.
• Adam Zuvanich, who wrote about high school sports.
• Graham Watson-Ringo, originally brought in as an assistant sports editor candidate (after a stint as Yahoo! sports blogs editor) before starting in February 2017 as executive producer of digital subscriber properties at ExpressNews.com, the newspaper portal for paid subscribers.

The layoffs came mere days after the departure of Editor-in-Chief Mike Leary, who retired on May 18 after leading the newsroom since August 2012. Managing Editor Jamie Stockwell also disclosed news of her own imminent departure this week after being hired as the New York Times' deputy national editor.

The job cuts weren't the first at the Express-News nor the deepest. Those came in 2009, when 75 positions were cut — roughly a third of the newsroom. And about three or four years ago, a half-dozen copy editors were let go at once.
Yet the cuts are significant in terms of yielding a barometer of the state of the industry in general and the health of the Express-News in particular. While Hearst officials insist the publication is profitable, many industry have their doubts. The prevalence of special projects even in the midst of thinning staff — special sports supplements, history-related publications and the like — are produced as ancillary revenue generators for the newspaper, giving rise to some speculation that income generated from the newspaper alone isn't cutting it.
Creative ways of increasing circulation numbers — if only on paper — from which ad rates are partially determined, gives further fodder to that speculation. One product dubbed The Light — in nostalgic nod to the newspaper's erstwhile competitor then also owned by Hearst (it's a complicated saga) — is nothing more than recycled stories from the Express-News. Thrown to addresses that don't subscribe to the Express-News, the thin publication essentially serves as a wrapper for the ad package that goes into the Sunday paper that's delivered to targeted areas.

Here's the creative part: It counts as Sunday circulation.

The tightening of shared resources will combine the Washington, D.C. and Austin bureaus of the Express-News and sister publication Houston Chronicle will be combined, officials explained. As a result, two employees at the Chronicle's Austin bureau were laid off Wednesday ahead of the elimination of seasoned reporter Fikac. The aim is to continue local coverage, but combing coverage on statewide issues — energy, immigration and some college sports coverage, according to Hearst officials.

Vernon Loeb, managing editor at the Chronicle, has been tapped to lead the San Antonio newsroom until a permanent editor is found.

Despite company officials' best spin on the development, criticism against Hearst was swift. Now more than ever, with the nation led by a president who's taken to condemning journalists as "enemies of the people" trading in "fake news," the watchdog role of newspapers is needed now more than ever, many critics immediately suggested.

"So today the penny pinchers at @Hearst corporation gutted the San Antonio @ExpressNews newsroom, basically turning it into the SA bureau of the @HoustonChron," former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, who later served as HUD secretary under President Barack Obama, tweeted. "Consolidation. This despite record profits at @Hearst. Terrible for the local community."

His identical twin brother, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, was just as strident: "The newsroom at the San Antonio @ExpressNews, the only newspaper serving the nation’s 7th largest and fastest-growing city, was gutted this week," he wrote in a tweeted message. "Godspeed to the great reporters who’ve told the stories of San Antonians over the years."

The tweet drew an immediate rebuke from Loeb, showing his loyalist Hearst stripes as he headed to San Antonio to temporarily steer the ship until a permanent editor is found: "Respectfully,the layoffs today at Express-News were hard, but did not gut the newsroom," he wrote succinctly in a tweeted reply.

Other critics can't reconcile the layoffs with claims of year-to-year profits Hearst has often touted. "All this after @Hearst reported seven consecutive years of record profits," Lauren McGaughy, a Texas politics reporter at the Dallas Morning News observed on Twitter.

Meanwhile, some of the laid-off journalists took to Twitter to confirm they were let go.

In Austin, Texas Tribune CEO and former Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith took time to praise Fikac in a tweet. "If you've been around the Texas Capitol for any period of time, you can't help but know and admire Peggy — one of the best reporters to cover politics and policy over the last several decades," he wrote.

It's hard for many to understand how a newspaper would have to resort to layoffs, not only given claims of robust profit but in the nation's 7th-largest city that's also one of the fastest-growing municipalities. Even amid industry troubles, surely even a newspaper some may view a media anachronism should still be able to make a go of it.

Yet those who'd think that don't know the sometimes surreal nature of the San Antonio media market.

In the glory days, the city once had two competing newspapers, the San Antonio Light and the Express-News, in a classic Hearst Corp. versus Murdoch Corp. rivalry, respectively. Those days ended 25 years ago when the Light folded as the city, like so many since, was no longer able to sustain two competing dailies. Ironically, former editorial staff from the Light — some working until the lights went out for good — recently gathered at a San Antonio venue for a well-attended 25th-year reunion.

Here's that aforementioned complicated part as it relates to San Antonio newspaper history. As the competition came to a head with room for only one newspaper by the early 90s, Rubert Murdoch is said to have agreed to sell his Express-News to Hearst Corp. under one major and non-negotiable condition: Hearst would have to keep his people while throwing all Light staffers out of work. And that's exactly what happened, ultimately sending Light reporters on that final day, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 1993, making a beeline to the longtime, if unofficial, media hangout, Joey's bar on St. Mary's Street in the shadow of the San Antonio skyline, as the final edition rolled on the printing presses. There, laid-off staffers commiserated and cried in their beers — both literally and figuratively.

The story about Murdoch's ultimatum may very well be apocryphal, as it's never been confirmed by official sources. But in the gallows humor utilized by the self-described ink-stained wretches of journalism, Light staffers took to saying the agreement was akin to killing one's children in order to adopt. A quarter-century later, those now-older adoptees don't seem to be faring all that well anymore under the guardianship of an increasingly strict and unforgiving parent.

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