Competition may lead to newsroom ?attrition?

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has denied rumors that the editorial staffs of the Northwest Arkansas Times and The Benton County Daily Record would be slashed by two-thirds in the wake of the new alliance between their owner, Community Publishers Inc., and the D-G’s owner, Wehco Media Inc.

Paul Smith, vice president and general manager for the D-G, said, however, that about 25 percent of the Times, Daily Record and D-G editorial jobs may be eliminated over time through attrition.

“Some people might be reassigned,” he said. “I don’t know of any positions we will eliminate [initially].

“There will probably be fewer positions than they had a month ago,” Smith said of the Times editorial staff, “but, hopefully, any cutbacks in positions will be through attrition.”

The executives are still trying to figure out how much duplication of resources there will be in the newsrooms and how to deal with it.

Northwest Arkansas is blanketed with newspaper coverage. But Smith said there’s still news that isn’t being covered. Eliminating duplication will free up reporters to cover different stories, he said.

Smith indicated the long-term agreement means the CPI newspapers will drop The Associated Press and other wire services since those will be carried by the D-G.

“I think the reality is new ground is being broken here, and nobody knows for sure how it’s going to evolve or develop because there’s no real pattern for this,” said Hoyt Purvis, a journalism professor at the University of Arkansas. “There’s not any absolute, clearly chartered game plan that covers every contingency. That’ll be worked out over time, I think.”

Jeff Jeffus, publisher of the Times and vice president and general manager of the Wehco/CPI dailies, said some sections of the newspapers will be combined to avoid duplication of news, but he wouldn’t say which sections would be affected. Smith said classified advertising would be one of them.

The budgets of the two CPI dailies are still 30 percent more than for comparable-sized newspapers across the country, Smith said.

“I do know it’s way, way more than any newspaper in the country their size spends,” he said.

Smith declined to reveal any of the budget figures.