The McClatchy Co.’s announcement that it will lay off 1,600 employees will boost the number of newspaper employees laid off this year to 5,000. Nationwide, 12.5 million people are unemployed. Craig Damrauer’s New Math post for this week addresses layoffs: Damrauer’s New Math is very smart — something for the geek in all of us. [...]

Two weeks ago, the Post-Dispatch laid off 20 people, including reporters Patrick O’Connell and Christine Byers, copy editor Colleen Schrappen and designer Elizabeth Baird. Under the guild contract, employees with more seniority could volunteer to be laid off, which is what has happened. O’Connell, Byers, Schrappen and Baird return to work today. In the next [...]

Back in July, I talked to designer/artist-extraordinaire Amy Martin. She had been laid off from The Los Angeles Times and was offering to help her job-seeking co-workers redesign their résumés. That was incredibly inspiring. Amy sent an update on Saturday: Two exciting things happened this week: 1) the poster I designed for Manifest Hope is [...]

The Post-Dispatch laid off 20 people on Friday, 17 from the newsroom. It was unexpected — 18 people were laid off less than a month ago. To say there’s a feeling of defeat in the newsroom is an understatement. Adding to they mayhem, our guild contract is being renegotiated and the layoffs started a couple [...]

The Times of Northwest Indiana laid off 12 employees on Friday, including four in the newsroom. Business editor Bill Bero is probably the most notable departure — and his role will not be filled. When I met Bero, he was a metro editor. Then he was pushed off to advertising to run a couple of [...]