Gannett to cut staff by 3%; layoff notices begin

Gannett Co. Inc. will eliminate about 1,000 jobs at its newspapers, 600 with layoffs, according to a company memo provided to Gannett Blog, published by Jim Hopkins, a former reporter and editor for USA Today and the company's papers in Arkansas, Idaho and Kentucky.

"The reader provided a copy of a memo that Daily Times Publisher Rick Jensen e-mailed about 4 p.m." Wednesday at the paper in Salisbury, Md. "Across Gannett’s Community Publishing division, about 1,000 positions will be eliminated -- about 3 percent of the workforce,'' the memo says. "Of the 1,000 positions, about 600 employees will be laid off."

Jensen and Gannett executives declined to comment to Hopkins on his report, but The Courier-Journal of Louisville reported on its Web site late this morning that the newspaper "will lay off about 15 employees and leave other positions vacant as part of a broader cost-cutting move" by Gannett. The news came from Arnold Garson, who recently became publisher of the paper.

The C-J cuts would be about 3 percent of workforce, but the memo does not say whether each of the company's 89 dailies and 116 community weeklies "will reduce employment by 3 percent -- or whether the rates might instead vary by business within what's now called the U.S. Community Publishing division," Hopkins notes. "Several GCI papers have already made recent job cuts, but at a higher rate: 5 percent."