Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Westchester and Louisville cuts especially deep

Among the many noteworthy job reductions yesterday, based on the rate of cuts:

The Journal News at Westchester, N.Y., eliminated 47 of its 375 jobs, a total of 12.5%. Janet Hasson, named publisher three weeks ago, told the paper: "We're aligning our costs with current revenue trends and preserving the resources to produce relevant content and generate revenue." The paper's circulation is 77,102 weekdays.

The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., cut 50 jobs -- about 10% of all. Publisher Arnie Garson said the future of the paper depends on the local economy, which hasn’t rebounded as fully as hoped. "If we get a break, we’ll be fine," he said. The C-J's weekday circulation averages 151,918.

Yesterday's count: about 575
The latest site-by-site job cut estimates are in this read-only spreadsheet. Figures are at 6:30 a.m. ET today, and are based on reader reports and published accounts. They include a combined 100 reductions or so earlier this quarter. Adjusted for those, we've now tallied about 575 jobs at about 33 sites yesterday alone.

Corporate projected that about 700 people would be laid off across many if not most of the company's more than 80 U.S. newspapers. That figure doesn't include dozens of unfilled jobs that also were eliminated yesterday.

Got a published report on the layoffs? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

15 comments:

  1. Hey Jim, why is Tucson still on the read-only list? It's gone.

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  2. 6:34 I've now removed Tucson. I keep a separate master spreadsheet, which includes that Arizona city.

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  3. "If we get a break, we will be fine." Are you serious? This kind of denial will be our death. If I worked for him, I would resign and compete against him. If he worked for me, he'd resign. And damn fast, too. "If we get a break." Sorry, it ain't coming.

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  4. Arnie Garson has been a disgrace everywhere he's gone within Gannett.

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  5. Morristown NJ lost 6 (it's not the spreadsheet)

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  6. Trend: new pubs are brought in to make deep cuts. Indy, TJN.

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  7. 8:11 I read that quote and thought the same as you. You can't make this stuff up.

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  8. RE: Trend: new pubs are brought in to make deep cuts. Indy, TJN.

    6/22/2011 9:06 AM

    MNCO: Newer publisher (last fall.) 81 positions yesterday. In Central Ohio. That's significant.

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  9. 6:34 Good work on that read-only spreadsheet Jim. I know it is a bitch to put together and updated, but I for one find it very informative, if only in the sense of an obituary.

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  10. I know the Photo Editor at the Jackson TN paper got axed. On her birthday no less.

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  11. 12:45, they let me go on my birthday, too. It seemed like a terrible thing at the time. But today I view it as the greatest gift ever received. I am glad that it happened on my birthday. Perhaps this is cliche, but I do not care: it was a day of rebirth for me.

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  12. Arnie Garson is a douchebag. Someone parked in his parking spot by the building one day, and when he drove up and saw that his parking spot was occupied, he sat in his suv and held the horn down nonstop for about fifteen minutes until security found the person and had them move their vehicle.

    15 minutes of holding the horn down. Karma is a bitch..thats all I know.

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  13. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  14. One of the (many) big mistakes Gannett makes is to shoot first, ask questions later. Mgmt. has no respect for operations, no respect for its employees, no respect for anything but the bottom line. People are laid off, but the work is expected to get done just the same and the bigwigs get their bonuses. Attention Craig Dubow and Gracia Martore: Have you no shame?

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  15. Maybe Arnie's in a bad mood because he had to be the hatchet man for a company that pays its big cheeses obscene salaries. Arnie is a solid news man who had to make some very tough decisions, like closing the Indianapolis bureau when as much as a third of his market is in Indiana. At least he kept a Washington bureau, which Des Moines did not. But that might not have been the case if Kentucky didn't have the Senate Republican leader and Tea Party seatmate.

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