Thursday, June 14, 2012

600 layoffs in a single day--not a record

By Jeff Sonderman
Does Tuesday’s massive layoff of 600 in a single day at four Advance Publications newspapers in New Orleans and Alabama earn a place in newspaper-layoff history?

Sadly, no.

News organizations have announced other job reductions of even larger or similar size in recent years. Here’s a reminder of some of the biggest:

    Feb. 9, 2012: Gannett offers buyouts for up to 665 newspaper workers.
    Nov. 21, 2011: Booth Newspapers announced 543 layoffs (though they were eligible to re-apply for about 200 new jobs with MLive Media Group).
    June 21, 2011: Gannett lays off about 700 workers from its newspapers division.
    Feb. 23, 2010: ABC News lays off 300 to 400.
    Oct. 30, 2009: Time Inc. planned to cut about 540 jobs, after 600 the year before.
    March 9, 2009: McClatchy announces 1,600 coming layoffs, 15 percent of the workforce.
    Jan. 30, 2009: A.H. Belo announces 500 cuts at the Dallas Morning News, Providence Journal and Riverside Press-Enterprise, after 413 buyouts months earlier.
    Dec. 4, 2008: Gannett wraps up cuts totaling a reported 2,184 across many papers.
    Nov. 7, 2008: EW Scripps cuts 400 jobs.
    Aug. 14, 2008: Gannett memo announces 1,000 job cuts affecting 600 people.
    June 2008: In one bloody week, about 900 newspaper workers lost jobs.

Even these painful layoffs look puny in comparison to some of the all-time biggest corporate layoffs:

    IBM dropped 60,000 workers in July 1993, just six months after Sears/K-Mart had let go of 50,000.
    More recently, during or following the 2008 recession, there were cuts of 50,000 at Citigroup, 47,000 at GM, 30,000 at Bank of America and 24,600 at Hewlett-Packard.
[Source: Poynter]

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