CityBeat has held off on posting the names of some people we've heard have been laid off from The Cincinnati Enquirer pending better verification, but we can now confirm two more departures.
Assistant Business Editor Randy Tucker and Obituaries Writer Rebecca Goodman have left the newspaper's staff. Tucker was a victim of the layoffs; it's unclear whether Goodman was laid off or chose to leave since she recently graduated from law school.
“Black Wednesday” has become “Black Thursday.”
Layoffs continued for a second day at The Gannett Co.’s newspaper holdings, including The Cincinnati Enquirer. Because The Enquirer is so notoriously tight-lipped about the names or job titles of staffers who are let go, CityBeat is slowly confirming names from various sources and cobbling together a more complete list.
It's true: Arch-conservative Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Peter Bronson has been laid off.
Earlier today, Bronson posted a message on his blog, Bronson Is Always Right, bidding farewell to his readers. It was posted under the headline, "Unemployment Statistics Increase -- Including Me." The item was posted at 4:54 p.m. but appears to have been later scrubbed from the Web site by newspaper management.
UPDATE: Although CityBeat got this list from sources within The Enquirer's Elm Street offices, some bloggers now say James Jackson hasn't been laid off. With no official word forthcoming from The Enquirer or Mr. Jackson, we'll change his status to "unclear."
UPDATE II: Jackson just tweeted the following, circa 10:30 p.m. "In this economy, these are tough times for all, and I'm so sad about friends losing their jobs, equally grateful also still to have mine."
People in the media industry have been dreading it for a while, and now it's finally here: "Black Wednesday."
Mass layoffs began today at newspapers owned by The Gannett Co., which includes The Cincinnati Enquirer. As with past layoffs at the paper, details of which staffers were affected are leaking in spurts and fits, but here's what we know so far.
In a memo distributed to employees Thursday, Cincinnati Enquirer Publisher Margaret Buchanan wrote that the newspaper will lay off up to 100 people in the next few days. The Gannett Co., The Enquirer's parent firm, is bracing for about 1,400 layoffs in its newspaper division before July 9. Buchanan's memo is the first indication about how the cutbacks will affect Cincinnati's only remaining daily newspaper.
More than 200 people attended Imago’s Earth Spirit Rising conference at Xavier University this weekend, where they were challenged to rethink their actions and their effect on the planet.
Speaker Paula Gonzalez, a Dominican nun and futurist, cast the challenges ahead in stark terms: “We must realize the scale of our times, which is on the scale of transitions like going from hunter-gathering to agriculture, or industrialization. You must take the messages of this conference home in your heart, in your soul, in your gut, and get off your butt and act.”
As the newspaper industry continues to suffer from declining ad revenues and a migration of readers to the Internet, The Cincinnati Enquirer is being hit particularly hard.
Dozens of newspapers nationwide reported drops in circulation, according to the latest figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. But the figures reported for Cincinnati’s only daily metropolitan newspaper were in the double-digits, well above the national average decline of 7 percent.