AP Layoffs Include Photographers, Texas Legend Harry Cabluck
NEW YORK, NY (November 18, 2009) – As the Associated Press follows through on their commitment to lower payroll costs by 10 percent before the end of the year, layoffs began yesterday across the company and some veteran names were among those let go.
In Texas, a regional legend and State House institution, Harry Cabluck, 71, who's been in the business for more than 50 years, four of those decades with AP, was laid off. Cabluck was part of covering every major news story in Texas for a long, long time, and he was in President John F. Kennedy's motorcade on that fateful day in Dallas in 1963.
Other AP veterans let go include photography staff members Donna McWilliams in Dallas; Al Grillo in Anchorage, AK; Mary Ann Chastain in Columbis, SC; and Winslow Townson and Lisa Poole in Boston, MA.
Also reported to be gone is the AP national photography editor Victor Vaughan, the second-in-command manager in the AP's photo department in Manhattan. He had been assistant managing editor for presentation at the Arizona Daily Star, and was one of AP's highest ranking editors of color.
The AP today finally began reporting on their own layoffs. According to journalism blog sites where people have reported their own job losses, many AP editorial assistants across the company were dropped, and in some states the AP state editor was laid off and some remaining state editors will be responsible for two states now. Dozens of people have been let go nationally yesterday and today, according to blog post tallies.
According to the Guild on Wednesday afternoon, a total of 57 AP staffers have now been laid off. The group includes 33 newspersons, 19 editorial assistants, and five photographers, the Guild said in a statement on their Web site.
Earlier this year AP offered buy-out packages with incentives to veteran employees in order to reduce their payroll, but not enough took the offers and there was insufficient attrition during the year to avoid these layoffs.
A News Media Guild representative said the layoffs covered "dozens" of Guild-member employees. It's the largest round of AP layoffs since 2006, the guild says, when 100 technology workers were let go.
The layoffs come at a time when U.S. unemployment has climbed to the rate of 10.2 percent, a 26-year high according to The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper industry is AP's main source of income, and news publishing continues to suffer under a crushing financial environment that shows advertising revenue and readership continuing to decline to record lows.
A year ago when AP CEO Tom Curley said the payroll would be cut by 10 percent, AP reportedly had about 4,000 employees. A 10 percent cut would mean that as many as 400 people would have to take the buy-outs or retire, and open jobs left standing, for AP to meet their goal.
AP's White House veteran Ron Edmonds, a senior staff member, was one of those who took the buy-out offer earlier this year. In July, Edmonds decided to wrap up his 28-year photojournalism career after staying on the job long enough to see President Barack Obama elected and inaugurated, he told News Photographer magazine.
Read a Texas Tribune article about Harry Cabluck
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