Napa Valley Register layoffs latest in an industry battling economic headwinds

Sasha Paulsen wasn’t too surprised when the Napa Valley Register eliminated her job last week after 23 years as its features editor.

“It's been such a roller coaster of layoffs and cutbacks, and then the (February) furlough and then more layoffs,” said Paulsen, referring to cuts the Iowa-based Lee Enterprises-owned newspaper has been making for more than a year.

“It's too bad because my area has always been food, wine and the arts, and some features,” she said. “That's kind of a lot of what Napa is about for people who live here and the people who visit. So how do you understand the decisions that (Lee) makes in Iowa? I don't think you really can.”

Paul Franson, publisher of NapaLife and a columnist for the Napa Valley Register, broke the news about the layoffs in an April 19 special edition of his weekly subscriber-based newsletter.

“Expect even more generic articles from the Midwest, less about Napa Valley and from Napa writers,” Franson wrote. “We don’t need more stories about shoveling snow or growing corn in Iowa.”

Paulsen was one of two employees laid off last week. The other was Danielle Wilde, who had moved from Los Gatos to Napa in November to accept her first full-time journalism job, according to Franson. Wilde declined to participate in this story.

Marc Hand, a Yountville resident and media veteran, formed Highway 29 Publishing in November after buying the Yountville Sun and Calistoga Tribune to keep them from folding.

Lee Enterprises’ move will hurt the Napa Valley, Hand said.

“You hate to lose those kinds of resources, and especially with the history that Sasha has in the Valley,” he said. “(She’s) an amazing resource and storyteller and somebody that really knows Napa Valley so deeply.”

Hand is also a co-founder and chair of the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit established in 2020 whose mission is to keep “local news in local hands.” The entity so far has acquired 24 weekly newspapers in the Denver metro area and is now working to acquire community papers in Texas, and four other markets that can’t yet be publicly disclosed, Hand said.

Lee Enterprises executives declined to disclose the reason for the layoffs at the Napa Valley Register.

“We do not have a comment at this time,” Tracy Rouch, director of communications at Lee Enterprises, responded in a Monday email statement to the North Bay Business Journal.

Lee Enterprises operates 77 publications in 26 markets across the country. The Napa Valley Register is its sole publication in California.

Last week’s cuts didn’t come out of the blue. Companywide, Lee has been steadily cutting costs and jobs across its community newspapers and at the corporate level for years — even more so after a November 2021 hostile takeover bid from hedge fund Alden Global Capital, Axios reported.

The Napa Valley Register’s layoffs followed Lee’s trimming of about 15 newsroom jobs in mid-April across four of the five community newspapers it owns in Montana, according to multiple reporting from the state’s media outlets.

On Monday, the Arizona Daily Star, a Tucson publication controlled by Lee and Gannett, saw its newsroom lose 25% of its staff, including its top editor, according to TucsonSentinel.com, a local, independent nonprofit watchdog group.

The cuts also included the opinion page and photo editors, and both new and veteran reporters, according to TucsonSentinel.com.

The Arizona Daily Star’s newsroom cuts came one week after nine employees on the business side were laid off, according to TucsonSentinel.com.

But Lee and Gannett are not alone in making reductions.

News organizations have faced turmoil for about 15 years for a multitude of reasons, including declining readership of print editions and viewing audiences, the rise of digital technology, drops in ad revenue and economic uncertainties and recessions.

These challenges were exacerbated by the pandemic, and have affected news companies large and small.

Last week, New York City-based BuzzFeed shuttered its news operations and terminated 15% of its staff. The Washington Post conducted layoffs in January, and The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have cut jobs over the course of the pandemic.

It has been widely reported that Gannett, parent company to USA Today and the largest newspaper publisher in the country by circulation (over 8.59 million in 2020), began conducting layoffs in 2004 in response to dwindling newspaper advertising.

In a February article, USA Today said it ended 2022 with “approximately 14,200 employees, down from 16,300 at the end of 2021.” In addition to layoffs, it reported its cost-cutting measures included five days of unpaid leave for most staff and a pause in the company's 401(k) match.

Independent newspapers are also feeling the economic squeeze.

The locally owned Sonoma Media Investments, parent company to the Business Journal, reduced its workforce in April by approximately 10%, as CEO Eric Johnston detailed in an April 13 column.

Back in Napa, the future of the corporate-controlled Napa Valley Register remains to be seen.

“Lee has been so remote from what we do on a day-to-day basis,” Paulsen said. “Its presence has become increasingly oppressive and hard to ignore. But for the most part, I've just loved the work I did.”

Paulsen, who has published two novels, plans to spend time working on her next novel. It was already in the works before she was laid off.

“My third one is set in a newsroom of a community newspaper,” she said. “Because back in the day when I started, it was a very exciting, fun thing to do, and a great place to be. And I always felt like I was at the center of the community.”