Gazette lays off 11 employees

The Gazette laid off 11 employees Friday in a cost-cutting move amid a brutal industrywide downturn that also triggered a decision earlier this month to close an affiliated newspaper in Arizona.

The cuts here included seven employees in the newsroom, three in circulation and one in advertising, leaving Colorado Springs’ only daily newspaper with a staff of fewer than 300, Gazette President and Publisher Steve Pope said Friday. The Gazette employed nearly 500 people in early 2007 but has cut its staff through attrition and several rounds of layoffs as competition from online advertising outlets has reduced advertising revenue across the industry.

Deteriorating economic conditions in Colorado Springs, particularly among retailers, auto dealers and the real estate industry, prompted cuts in The Gazette’s budget for 2010, which triggered the layoffs, Pope said during a meeting with employees. The company tried to avoid layoffs through mandatory furloughs, a 5 percent salary cut for all employees and a variety of cost-cutting measures this year, including trimming pages from the printed newspaper, he said.

Advertising revenue for U.S. newspapers was down 29.9 percent in the first half of the year to $12.1 billion and is down more than 45 percent for the same period from its 2006 peak, according to the Newspaper Association of America. U.S. newspaper circulation for Mondays through Saturdays fell 10.6 percent from April to September to a 70-year low of 30.4 million, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The Gazette’s average paid circulation for Mondays through Saturdays during the same six-month period fell 7.8 percent from a year ago to 88,801. Sunday circulation was down 6.2 percent to 100,762. Readership on the Internet, however, is growing — page views for all Web sites owned by The Gazette this year are up 40 percent from a year ago, and page views for gazette.com are up 22 percent this year, Gazette officials said.

Irvine, Calif.-based Freedom Communications Inc., which owns The Gazette and has been operating in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since Sept. 1, announced earlier this month it will shut down its East Valley Tribune newspaper in Arizona by Dec. 31 after unsuccessfully trying to sell the publication. Freedom sought bankruptcy protection as part of an agreement with its lenders to restructure its debt in exchange for transferring control of the company to a lender group headed by JPMorgan Chase & Co.

A hearing on Freedom’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy is scheduled for Dec. 17 in Delaware.
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