A.H. Belo Corp., the parent company of The Dallas Morning News, announced across-the-board pay cuts at its properties and a 50% cut to its quarterly dividend while also saying it is tapping into its cash reserves to somewhat mitigate revenue losses attributable to the coronavirus pandemic.
There will be no layoffs or furloughs for now, the company said in a regulatory filing.
There will be pain for employees, however. Workers making $45,000 or less will get a 3% reduction in pay while those making more than that will see 8% cuts.
Among the executive suites, Robert W. Decherd, chairman, president and CEO of A. H. Belo, will take a pay cut of 16.5%. The base salaries for Morning News President and Publisher Grant Moise and Executive Vice President and CFO Katy Murray will be reduced 10%. Performance-based bonuses for C-suite managers will be reduced, meaning their pay reductions could total as much as 27%, the newspaper reported in an April 6 story by staff writer Maria Halkias.
Compensation for board directors will be cut 17% and the seats of two directors who are not standing for reelection this spring will not be filled, Murray said.
The $8 million in cash reserves come from a piggy bank that at the beginning of 2020 had $48.6 million in cash, a reserve not seen among many newspaper companies.
"This gives our board choices to prioritize the long-term health of this great enterprise and support its reason for being — that is, to provide invaluable news and information to the people who depend on us and to the communities The Dallas Morning News has served for nearly 135 years,” Decherd said in a statement.
He said the $8 million will be used for operations, to pay the reduced dividend "and continue paying a dividend and fund progress toward becoming sustainably profitable in a digital world.”
The measures come as the newspaper feels the same impact the entire industry has felt from the COVID-19 pandemic, “an economic reality where our growth in audience is not enough to offset near-term challenges in advertising revenue,” Moises said.
After the measures were announced, Morning News Editor Mike Wilson tweeted: “We cut everybody's salary today. I hate that we had to do it, but I'm grateful that our company found ways to share the burden and invest in the future. Damn, I love these journalists. They'll never stop fighting and I won't either.”
