More newspapers cut jobs

The Denver Post announced that it will buyout about 90 newsroom workers to trim costs. The paper only has about 268 workers in the newsroom so this move will take them down to 178. This comes one-year after the Post bought out a dozen newsroom positions. The Rocky Mountain News owned by Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co. eliminated 50 employees last month and The Baltimore Sun just eliminated 50 positions.

All these layoffs raise the question can small papers still provide the same quality coverage that their readers rely on with 178 people? Job cuts that are this big must have a lasting effect on what the paper is able to cover and how they divide their resources to cover local and national events. Most papers already rely on the big three to provide them with coverage of most international events. So if a paper cannot afford to have a corespondent in Iraq do they need one in Chicago? New York? Washington D.C.?

All these layoffs will probably lead papers like the Denver post to focus more on local events that they can cover better then any other news outlet.

Many news outlets have used layoffs as a way to boost their stock prices but that rarely ever works.

Media General Inc had a net lost in the first quarter of 2007 of $6.5 million and as a result they are cutting 70 staff positions from the Tampa Tribune.

Discovery started April by cutting 200 jobs, with more layoffs to come.

In the case of Le Journal in Quebec, Canada 140 employees were locked out after the company reached an impasse with the Canadian Union of Public Employees at the daily tabloid newspaper.