No kidding? Job cuts listed as top news

The record number of jobs cut was the top news industry story in Joe Strupp’s annual list in Editor & Publisher.

“Three years ago, this was the top industry story of the year when some 2,000 newspaper jobs were lost in 2005, Strupp writes. “This year, Gannett cut that many in December alone, after slashing 1,000 others in August. Then there is McClatchy with two rounds of cuts, totaling 2,500 jobs; Tribune slashing more than 1,000; and various other small dailies and chains dropping staff here and there. The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. saw more than 300 buyouts, while more than 100 jobs were lost each at The Washington Post, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Newsday and others.”

Strupp notes that the U.S. Department of Labor estimates some 21,000 newspaper industry jobs disappeared this year.

Strupp concludes:

“Somehow, newspaper owners continue to think that the way to handle economic downturns is to make their product worse be eliminating its most important asset, people. But with fewer reporters to dig up news as newspapers transition to the Web their content is going to look more and more like everything else online, limited and poorly reported.”

You can click on the headline to read the rest of the list, but be warned that it is a pretty dull list.