MaineToday Media, the owner of the Portland Press Herald and other Maine newspapers, has laid off eight employees across multiple departments.
Lisa DeSisto, MaineToday Media’s CEO, confirmed to Mainebiz in an email on Tuesday that eight of the company’s 405 positions were eliminated last week.
She said the workforce reduction “was needed to tighten expenses to be able to deliver our 2015 operating budget.” However, she said, the company “has made tremendous progress and finished 2014 with the month of December showing positive [year-over-year] circulation growth.”
Verified circulation numbers were not immediately available.
DeSisto said the following positions were cut: one at MaineToday.com, the company’s arts and entertainment website; one newsroom position at the Coastal Journal weekly newspaper; three in circulation and distribution; two in administration and finance; and one in the press room.
DeSisto also said the company let go of its paid bloggers at MaineToday.com because they “weren’t generating enough online ad revenue to offset the expense,” though she didn’t specify how many. She said the company is refocusing MaineToday.com, which relaunched last March, to become a listings destination on “where to go, what to eat and drink.”
“MaineToday site traffic has grown dramatically on a year-over-year basis, but the traffic to the blog posts was a very small fraction of the total,” DeSisto said.