Cuts, layoffs and more bad news

I recently left my first full-time reporter position at a small daily in St. Augustine, Fla. I took a job at a much larger daily in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where I’ve been for a little more than two months now. Last week, my past employer laid off 10 percent of the newsroom staff. What’s left is in shambles. When you’re already working with such a small staff, even the most minimal cuts are felt.

One of the best editors I’ve ever worked with was a victim in these lay offs.

In light of this, and newspaper layoffs spreading across the nation like wildfire, I give you this blog, referred to me by a friend suffering through all of it in St. Augustine, It details the emotional side of layoffs from the point of view of the Dallas Morning News - a massive and forward thinking news outlet that like the rest of us, is buckling under terrible corporate pressure.

Click here for an interactive map tracking newspaper layoffs across the country.

One of my favorite quotes from the site: “If the layoffs do happen and are anything as large as some of the chatter, there is a special place in Hell for whoever in HR or the legal department or whatever other layer of the corporation decided this w…as a good way to do this, shared by whichever of the top bosses agreed and issued the orders to stay silent. … Journalists have a need to know set deep in our DNA. All of the previous layoffs, the bosses gave us enough advance notice to let us plan and to satisfy some of that inbred curiosity. To leave us this time with nothing but rumors that have been impossible to validate was a needless cruelty.”