Gannett said today it plans on cutting 700 jobs from its newspaper division, citing stalling advertising revenue on both a local and national level.
The news was uncovered by blogger Jim Romenesko, who published an internal company memo on his site addressing the layoffs.
In the memo, Bob Dickey, president of Gannett’s U.S. community publishing division, said, The economic recovery is not happening as quickly or favorably as we had hoped and continues to impact our U.S. community media organizations.
Dickey specifically points to weaknesses in the real estate sector, slow job creation and softer auto ad demand as the main culprits.
Due to these softer demands, Dickey said that 2% of Gannetts work force will be terminated, effective over the next few months.
It is important to note that these decisions do not reflect individual performance and we thank and respect those employees for their work, Dickey said in the memo. We will do everything we can to help them and to minimize the impact on our other employees going forward.
Bloomberg.com reports that Gannett’s revenue declined for four years in a row to $5.44 billion in 2010, from $7.44 billion in 2007. In the first quarter, revenue dropped 3.7 percent to $1.25 billion and net income fell 23 percent to $90.5 million.
Gannett is the media giant behind job site CareerBuilder.com, news provider USAToday, and MomsLikeMe.com.
The company’s 82 U.S. daily newspapers, including USA TODAY, reach 11.6 million readers every weekday and 12 million readers every Sunday.
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