gannett plans to layoff 3,000 by december.

Also, time off to look for a new job out of this business!

 

The announcement is rolling out through Gannett buildings now. Sources say it's bad all-around.

 

I just created a separate thread. Already got my email.

 

Any word on who got whacked in Des Moines?

 

My apoloigies for replying to this post so far after the fact, but the subject has been on my mind for the last few days and here is what has been on my mind in a nutshell:

The problem isn't capitalism. It is our country's religious-like zeal in which we think of capitalism. We don't think of it as a system that is largely superior, but also limited and flewed. We tend to instead think of it as an all-powerful fix-all and we tend to approach it with "faith" rather than a healthy dose of pragmatism. So anything that deals with capitalism's inherent limitations and/or flaws is deemed "socialist" or, and by extension, "anti-American."

An example is the notion of government intervention for the economic crisis. I don't think there's much serious argument -- outside of a few right-wing apologists who try to project blame at all costs -- that says this is anything other than the result of unchecked capitalism. One of the flaws of capitalism is the lure of short-term profit. If you can scam a buck today and have a chance to continue to scam a buck tomorrow, it is too tempting to pass up a chance to keep scamming. That is the housing bubble in a nutshell. Everybody knew it was a house of cards, but it was just too tempting to keep exceeding quarterly profit goals at the expense of the long-term.

So the answer is to regulate the sector that was making the vast majority of those loans -- primarily the non-banking, banking industry (mortgage banks, hedge funds, etc. not covered by FDIC) to guard the public against this kind of foolish investing of people's money. In other words, federally insure the investments in return for the requirement that they be regulated.

That is not popular on the right because it cramps the capitalist style. But that's the point. What saved traditional banks in the wake of the depression was the confidence that your deposit was insured against anything stupid the bank could do with your money. Without that assurance, banks could not have come back. The religious-like faith in capitalism only lasts until the money runs out.

But the hard-to-face truth is that capitalism without government backing is doomed to eventually fail. The trick is to have the proper balance between capitalists being allowed to be capitalists and government making sure the capitalists don't screw things up. Too much government and you get the 1970s. Too little government and you get 2008. Neither is good.

We, as a country, were still so shellshocked by the 1970s that we allowed 2008 to happen. Now we are becoming aware that the only thing worse than a government bureaucrat running amok is a capitalist profiteer running amok.

And before you blame it on the schmucks who bought those adjustable-rate loans, check your 401k. Chances are, you bought the mortgage-backed security that allowed the fool to buy the loan. Wasn't anybody holding a gun to the mortgage lender's heads making them make the loans (and don't even bring up the Community Reinvestment Act. That only applied to traditional banks and the VAST majority of these loans did not come from traditional banks). Wasn't anybody holding a gun to the borrower's head. And there wasn't anybody making the stockholder buy the security.

 

More rumors of layoffs starting April 6th and oh yeah, production hubs.

FML.

http://www.gannettblog.blogspot.com/

 

I'm a little concerned about this next round of layoffs. I'm in a position now where I'm not really doing one specific job. Like, I'm taking on a bunch of things, but not one thing where they could say 'We'll miss StaggerLee because he does this.' I'm definitely pulling my weight, picking up a lot of stories that are being passed down because of furloughs, people getting busy, etc. And the other thing is that my boss has been giving me a lot of time off lately. Not so much days off, but having me just cover one assignment and giving me the rest of the afternoon off. I'm worried he's trying to prepare for life without StaggerLee in the office.

Quite honestly, though, I'm at a position right now in my life where I don't care either way. If I get laid off, so be it. If I don't, so be it. I've never been more indifferent about anything in my life than my current career status. And that terrifies me, because I think I'm losing the passion for the business.

 

All I can say is hang in there until you find something better - or get laid off. I just hope it doesn't come to that.

If it means anything, know that there are a lot of us out there in the same boat. Sad to know, but it's a horrible reality.

 

Pensacola laying off 84 (none right now in the newsroom) and outsourcing printing to Mobile, Ala. beginning in June.

http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/urgent-pensacola-says-84-layoffs-in.html

I'm sure this will work out splendidly in football season. I believe it's about an hour from the News Journal office in downtown Pensacola to the Mobile presses. And they also have to print the Mobile paper. I'd imagine this would mean far less flexibility on deadlines, which will almost certainly be much earlier.

 

That makes nearly 200 this round.

 

I'm anxious to see if GCI will even acknowledge that this is a "round of layoffs." I remember last August when they started to do layoffs, they wouldn't acknowledge that it was a round of layoffs. It wasn't until the November layoffs that they finally acknowledged that August was a round of layoffs.

 

I'm wondering if this round of layoffs is only starting...