Westchester Daily Cuts 11% of Staff; Gannett Paper Trimming Approaching 300 Jobs

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Gannett Co.-owned The (Westchester) Journal News has laid off 11 percent of its staff, eliminating 26 jobs, as Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing division's blood-letting nears 300 workers pink-slipped, the Gannett Blog (Gannettblog.blogspot.com) reported today.

Seventeen of the Journal News employees terminated worked in the newsroom, reducing the daily's total workforce to 206. Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper publisher, has been tight-lipped about the latest round of staff reductions, but the Gannett Blog tally is roughly 280 jobs lost across 45 sites. Even the Gannett Government Media division was not spared, as the Army Times drummed 17 staffers off the premises last month.

The U.S. Community Publishing division employs about 18,000. The latest round of layoffs is the company's most severe since June 2011.

USA Today--What About Tomorrow?

Image via WikipediaCiting rumblings on the Gannett Blog, the Minnesota Post Web site today is reporting that media giant Gannett Company may be looking to unload its flagship national daily, USA Today, or spin the paper off as a separate entity.

Once the nation's largest circulation daily, USA Today's readership has plunged 20 percent over the past decade to 1.8 million readers, from 2.3 million.  Compounding the bad news is an equally precipitous drop in ad pages to 680 in the Fourth Quarter of 2010, compared to 1,045 ad pages during the Fourth Quarter in 2007.

The shrinking editorial staff and the diminished size of the daily have been chronicled by this blog over the past year. (See "TUOL" posts 11/16/10, 8/27/10, 6/24/10 and 2/12/10.)

Gannett Pares Collective News Staff of 3 NJ Dailies by Half

Image via WikipediaRoughly half of the combined 100 newsroom staffers at three of  Gannett Co.'s New Jersey dailies--Courier News, Daily Record and Home News Tribune--are getting pink-slipped, according to a memo leaked to the Gannett Blog and reported by AOL's Chatham Patch.

Declining circulation and shrinking advertising are fueling the layoffs and restructuring at the dailies, which last underwent layoffs and a major shake-up in 2009 that included moving all copy editing and design functions to the Neptune, N.J.-based Asbury Park Press. The Parsippany-based Daily Record serves Morris County; the Courier News readership is in Somerset County; and the Home News Tribune covers Middlesex County.

By total circulation, Gannett is the nation's largest newspaper publisher. This grim news hits hard because the dedicated staff of "TUOL" is fronted by a New Jersey native,  so it will take a while to fuhgeddabowdit.

USA Today: News is Hard, So Less Hard News

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A newsroom flow chart for Gannett Co.'s leaky flagship USA Today reproduced in Gannett Blog yesterday is an eye-opener.  Among the lowlights concerning the allocation of editorial resources is that USA Today has five reporters assigned to cover Congress, as compared to 27 journalists covering entertainment.


Over the past four years , circulation at USA Today, the nation's second largest daily after The Wall St. Journal, has dropped to 1.8 million from 2.3 million, while ad pages have decreased by half the same period [see "TUOL" post 8/27/10]. 


Gannett no doubt considers the redistribution of reporters as a revenue and readership booster, but count "TUOL" as among the rank and file who view it as capitulation. It's also misguided as Congress is at least as shallow as the entertainment world.