Uneasy Waters Ahead

Yesterday Jeff Johnson and Mark Kurtich came by our facility, to communicate with the employees, the direction the Tribune Company will be taking over the next two years.

The slide show from Tuesday's Town Hall Meeting with Dennis FitzSimons were shown, and remarks were made on the stock tender offer and the July repurchase of thirty million additional Tribune shares.

I asked the question "What percentage of the $100 million in cut backs will occur at the Los Angeles Times Operations Departments?" and I didn't take any notes, so I believe I misunderstood Mr. Johnson's answer? I thought he said since the Los Angeles Times brings in twenty-five percent of the Tribune's profits, we would cut twenty-five million from operations this year and twenty-five million in 2007? As many of my regular readers know, I'm not very good at math, but my calculations make this 50% of the $100 million at the Los Angeles Times. I know I am in error with these numbers, so I will query my co-workers on this today.

Would someone please give me the correct numbers on the cut backs for the Los Angeles Times over the next two years?

In January of 2005 I listed all six of my credit cards on a form and decided it was time to pay everything off. I have made my goals, and paid off four of the six credit cards, with another to be paid off this December.

My Visa and Master Cards seemed to be the hardest to pay off, and that was because I continued to use them every month. So I finally did the unthinkable, and cut the cards into small pieces. I have finally started to see the balances fall, with a payment made to my Visa card every Thursday to help lower my balance as quickly as possible.

With the Los Angeles Times Newspaper claiming there will be layoffs and LA Times management saying there will not be any layoffs, what's an employee to think? I say be prepared so if the worse comes to be, your not shocked and left unprepared by what may or maynot come to be.

Have a great day,
Eddie