Visalia | What's going on in the executive suite?

A reader describes management upheaval at the top of the Times-Delta in Visalia, Calif., with the latest top executive out on Friday.

Publisher Amy Pack is one of Gannett's longest-serving unit chief executives, having held the job since 1995.

The paper's weekday circulation is 16,540, and Saturday is 20,465, according to the March 31 report from the Alliance for Audited Media. (Circulation lookup.)

Last year, circulation fell 6.3% from 2011, a rate putting the paper in the middle of the pack among the U.S. community dailies, according to regulatory filings.

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.

Where does your department's employment rank?

At California's Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register, the newsroom accounts for a third of those papers' nearly 100 employees, according to one of my readers.

What's the story at your worksite?

Following a suggestion by a Gannett Blogger, I'm breaking down employment by department at each of the U.S. community dailies -- Gannett's largest and most financially challenged division. It has more than 20,000 of GCI's 31,000 employees. Plus, those papers are now undergoing a buyout that will reduce employment even more.

Please review this spreadsheet, then post your site's numbers by department. How to get the information? Count the names in your phone directories. Or look at the staff contact list on your website.

Then please post information for your site in the comments section, below.

Here are 2005-2010 circ losses for all U.S. dailies; Courier News in N.J. leads list, documents show

The Courier News in Bridgewater, N.J., had the biggest percentage loss in weekday circulation from 2005 to 2010, according to a new review of data for all of Gannett's 81 U.S. community newspapers, as published in the company's annual shareholder reports.

Bridgewater's circulation fell 51%, to 18,437 from 37,282 over those six years, my review shows.

The average for all the papers: a 27% decline, to a total 3.4 million weekday copies at the end of last year vs. 4.7 million in 2005.

I didn't include USA Today in this review because its business is so different from the community papers. USAT's circulation was 1.8 million at the end of last year vs. 2.3 million in 2005 -- a 22% decline, according to the annual reports.

Also, it's important to note that GCI had eight fewer papers in 2010 than in 2005, after selling those titles. Including the largest, The Honolulu Advertiser, they had combined circulation of 366,000.

The paper with the smallest loss was the Pacific Daily News in Hagatna, Guam: Its circulation fell just 10%.

I had previously calculated losses only for GCI's 10 biggest newspapers. I did the new review at the request of a Gannett Blog reader.

Across the industry, weekday circulation fell an average 16.4% from 2004-2009, to 45.7 million copies, according to the Newspaper Association of America. That's the most recent six-year period available on its website.

Where does your paper rank?
Go to this spreadsheet for data on all 81 papers in 2005 and 2010. Here are the top 10:

Note on Visalia, Tulare
GCI has combined the circulation for California's Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance Register in the 2010 annual report, instead of listing them separately, as was done in 2005. Combining the two figures in 2005, I calculate a 22% loss for the papers over the six-year period. But that's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.

Kicking ethics aside, Gannett launches jobs series

[Circled part of screenshot highlights Indianapolis' jobs series]

So much for deferring to local editorial control, eh?

Marching in lockstep, Gannett newspapers today launched a Corporate-driven editorial series about jobs, one that reads too much like advertorial to boost employment advertising -- even as it's being presented as public-service journalism.

For example, the Indianapolis Star's homepage features four links under a "Top 10 jobs in Indiana'' headline. (See screenshot, above.) One of the links takes readers to CareerBuilder, the employment site majority-owned by Gannett. Bending journalism ethics, the Star-branded CareerBuilder page doesn't disclose that the two companies are owned by Gannett.

A second link takes readers to another Star-branded page that appears to be a ContentOne production. It includes some editorial matter produced by USA Today and the Star -- and yet more content produced by CareerBuilder. Once more, the CareerBuilder business tie isn't disclosed.

Elsewhere across GCI, here's how Publisher Amy Pack tip-toed around the project in a letter to readers of her two California dailies: "We’d like to help our readers by creating an environment for the employment ads right here in the main news section of the Times-Delta and Advance-Register."

[Updated at 6:21 p.m. ET: It appears Corporate supplied some of the language for Pack's note. When I Googled her phrasing, I turned up similar letters signed by other Gannett publishers in communities that include Burlington, Vt.; Mountain Home, Ark., and St. George, Utah.]

Now, it's your turn. How did your newspaper launch the series? 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.

How we say goodbye to our friends

"Sayonara Visalia, I loved my job."

-- Anonymous@3:54 a.m., commenting on our growing paper-by-paper roster of layoffs. California's Visalia Times-Delta cut a reported 8 of its 123 jobs.

Cutlines Only: Mourning a child's death in Visalia

Reyes DeJesus Lopez and Maricela Rosales mourn the death of their daughter, Leyla Cariña Lopez Rosales, 15 months, at their home in Central California's Orosi. The toddler was critically injured when Marciela, 19, backed over her daughter in a driveway last Wednesday, the Visalia Times-Delta says today. "It was an accident," said Rosales, clutching at her only child's stuffed monkey. Photo by Teresa Douglass, Times-Delta via Newseum.

Cutlines Only showcases Gannett website art. To e-mail suggestions confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right. Or post a link in the comments section, below.