The Journal News cut 26 positions from its staff Monday, part of a series of layoffs at Gannett Company Inc. newspapers across the country.
The Journal News, a White Plains-based daily newspaper that covers Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties, reduced its total staff from 232 to 206 employees. Seventeen of the 26 cuts were to news staff, according to a posting on the company’s website that quoted Janet Hanson, publisher of The Journal News.
“The reduction in our payroll is necessary as we adjust to the changing marketplace,” Hanson said.
Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper publisher by circulation, eliminated at least 280 jobs at various newspapers in its latest round of cuts, according to Gannett Blog, an independent site run by former USA Today Editor Jim Hopkins. Layoffs have been reported at papers such as The Des Moines Register and The Arizona Republic, Gannett’s largest circulation paper.
It is the largest amount of layoffs at the company since 2001, when the company laid off 700 employees, according to the blog.
Gannett reported net earnings of $126.7 million in its second-quarter earnings report, down from $135.6 million over the same period in 2012. Despite overall net operating revenues declining slightly to $1.3 billion, the company’s broadcasting and digital revenues showed improvements of 3.2 and 2.9 percent, respectively. Its publishing arm, though still its largest source of net operating revenues, continued to deflate, to $904,231 in 2013 from $920,333 over the same period in 2012.
Last month, the company entered into an agreement to buy broadcast conglomerate Belo Corp. for $2.2 billion. The deal continues a shift in focus for the company away from print. Gracia Martore, president and chief executive officer of the company, said in the company’s second-quarter report that the company was accelerating its transformation into the ‘New Gannett’ every day.
In announcing The Journal News cuts, publisher Hasson said the company would remain the No. 1 news organization in the lower Hudson Valley, “regardless of what platform readers use to consume our content.”
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