Monday, January 12, 2009

Gazette layoffs

I am reliably informed that more layoffs have taken place in The Billings Gazette newsroom and that even more layoffs may take place today. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: The total is eight.

UPDATE 2: Fans say good-bye to one of the victims.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gannett is trying to avoid layoffs by asking everybody to take a week off (without pay, of course) sometime between now and the end of March. This affects staff at The Arizona Republic and KPNX-TV here in Phoenix, the Tucson Citizen, the Great Falls Tribune, USA Today and all the other properties purchased over the years by Al Neuhearth and his sucessors. (No word yet on whether the higher ups will also have to take an unpaid week off, as a gesture of fairness. Somehow, I doubt it.)

For the sake of the guys at the bottom, I hope this works -- but I doubt that too.

Anonymous said...

Gannett just put the Tucson Citizen up for sale, with a drop-dead date of March 21: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/090116/20090116005819.html?.v=1

Anonymous said...

I was curious how this would work and looked up an article on it on Editor/Publisher. It quoted a memo from the head of the company's newspaper division, who said everyone, including himself, who wasn't represented by a union, would have to take off 5 days. He said unions also would be asked to accept the furlough in lieu of layoffs.

Anonymous said...

The guys at the bottom will always get the worst of it. Look at the 3 Gazette layoffs over the past year. No managers, just lower-paid hourly employees. How long can they get away without letting a highly paid manager go?