Roundup of newsroom cutbacks

Providence Journal to lay off 100 more
An additional 100 Providence Journal workers are to be laid off by March 6 by A.H. Belo, the Dallas company that bought the newspaper in 1996. The Journal reported the impending layoffs Jan. 31 (A.H. Belo, owner of the The Providence Journal, plans to cut 500 jobs) but today we learned how many of those lost jobs would be in Providence. (A.H. Belo's other newspapers are the Dallas Morning News, Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise and the Denton (Texas) Record-Chronicle.)

See the full story on the ProJo website

Denver unions agree to cuts that average 11.7%
Unions representing workers at the Denver Newspaper Agency have reached a tentative agreement on wage and benefit cuts that average 11.7 percent.

The agency, a joint venture that handles the business operations of the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post, approached its unions in December. The agency sought $18 million in concessions as part of a broader $35 million cost-cutting package.

It’s not clear if the tentative agreement, reached at 1 a.m. today, meets that $18 million goal.

Tony Mulligan, administrative officer at the Denver Newspaper Guild, said the concessions were made with the awareness that the agency was struggling financially but working through a process to protect union members as much as possible.

Mulligan could not rule out agency layoffs even after a deal is approved. “I don’t know if there will be staffing reductions or not,” he said.

The agency has about 1,080 union employees, including about 900 subject to today’s deal.

Click on the headline to read the full story in the Rocky Mountain News

San Antonio Express-News cuts 75
"Incremental staff and budget cuts, we are sorry to say, have proven inadequate amid changing social and market forces now compounded by this deepening recession," editor Robert Rivard told the staff at San Antonio Express-News "No one is being asked to leave the Express-News today unless you so choose. March 20 will be the final day for those whose jobs are being cut."

See the memo from an Antonio Express-News' editor which was sent to Poyner Online’s Jim Romenesko

And Bob DeMay, who is also a Newspaper Guild officer at the BJ, reports on a differendt kind of cut on his News Photographers blog. Use the link at left to go there.

The latest cuts in Canton at The Repository are not in staff but in the product itself. Top Repository editors have been hosting live chats on the newspaper's Web site in response to reader reaction to a redesign of the paper which made its debut Tuesday.

Several major changes have taken place in the repackaging of the paper. Page one has now been designed in billboard fashion primarily to tease inside content. For the first two days page one had only one story on it.

The newspaper's Living section has been eliminated and the Local section is being replaced by a new section called Your Life. The new section will be primarily one calendar page with canned material, obits, with citizen journalist copy within.

The content from the former Local section will now be rolled into the A section bumping most of the world, national and state news. The editorial page was shrunk to one page to make room for the local content.