Cuba Business News and Information
Associated Press
The Dallas Morning News plans to close its bureau in Cuba as part of a program of staff cuts and realignment of resources, the newspaper’s editor said Thursday.
Editor Robert W. Mong Jr. said the newspaper had notified the Cuban government of its intent to close its Havana bureau. The Morning News was among a handful of U.S. media allowed to report from the the island nation ruled by Fidel Castro for the past 45 years.
“We felt that Cuba was an excellent place to be,” Mong said. “But given our new staffing levels, we felt that it was more important to have that person closer to home.”
The newspaper’s Havana-based correspondent will be reassigned to the Texas-Mexico border, Mong said. He said the transition will likely occur late this year or in early 2005.
The news comes a day after dozens of layoffs at The Morning News, Belo Corp.‘s flagship newspaper. Belo had announced last month that it would cut 250 jobs companywide. Publisher James Moroney said about 150 of those cuts would occur at The Morning News.
Belo said the layoffs were the result of flat revenues in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where it also owns a television station. Belo also has acknowledged overstating Morning News circulation and is taking a $26 million charge against earnings to compensate advertisers for the mistake.
In September 2000, The Morning News joined the Chicago Tribune and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel as the first American newspapers since the 1960s permitted by Castro’s government to operate in Cuba.
The Associated Press gained approval to return to Cuba in 1998. CNN also operates a bureau there.
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It’ absolutly amazing how Big Business took the Cuban Post available to this news team and placed them where they would be mare usefull. On the Texas-Mexican border ???? They would have been better off counting Canada Geese on the dark side of the moon. Americans need to know what is happening in Cuba. If you need information on the Mexican scene, just take a drive.
Seems like more attempted isolation with perhaps a little coercion from certain political elements in Texas.As Colin Reid above stated….“we need to know what happens in Cuba”.....Seeing Castro fall face into the ground,ally Arafat in a Coma and Bush re-elected and the embargo tightened.The potential for a potentially catastrophic end to the despised regime is now evident in Cuba according to my sources there.
It seems to me that concerns brought to light by writers like Eric are normal. We all have a need to know how safe our children are and with the past assaults on other parts of the world added to the Twin Towers declaration of war, you would be inclined to think that, because the American government has chosen to hold Afghani and Iraqi prisoners at G.Bay in Cuba,one of the worse things that the Dallas Morning News could have done was to cut one of the few news pipelines we have to Cuba. I think that it was wrong to put this particular group of prisoners so close to our homeland in a country that Bush hates so much anyway. The entire prisoner placement makes me nervous. On top of that, Bush has his nerve ,considering his present Cuban embargo, dumping his shit on Cuban steps. After all, Canadians don’t send their prisoners to Hawaii.
