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New Life, Gazette Lay Off 77 Employees
March 5, 2007 5:54 PM
Colorado Springs lost 77 jobs at high-profile organizations over the weekend. The total inclues 44 at New Life Church, and 33 at its daily newspaper, the Gazette. The Gazette job cuts came just prior to a local television station announcing that it will add staff.
The Gazette announced its job cuts on Saturday.
It says it laid off 23 full- and part-time employees Friday, and is eliminating the equivalent of 10 other full time jobs.
P. Scott McKibben, president and publisher since November, says the paper is balancing the company’s financial goals with an evolving media landscape.
The Gazette is owned by Irvine, California-based Freedom Newspapers, its flagship operation being the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, California. The job cuts locally include “about 10” in the newsroom, the paper says.
A story in Saturday’s Gazette says its weekday circulation is about 100,000, Freedom’s website puts that number at 200,000. It is the second largest paper in Fredom’s chain, behind only the Orange County Register. Freedom owns some 70 publications reaching what it says are a million subscribers. It also owns nine television stations from New York to Texas, which it says reach a combined 3.5 million households.
After eliminating 33 jobs on Friday, the Gazette is keeping about 475 full and part time employees. One of those leaving, though is 21-year-veteran Cartoonist Chuck Assay. The paper says Assay is merely taking a planned retirement a few months early.
Publisher McKibben said in Saturday’s edition of the Gazette that the entire newspaper industry has been down nationwide in the last several years, that it’s battling advertising and circulation losses from changing readership habits, and competition from the Internet and 24-hour TV news channels.
At the same time the Gazette is laying off, one LOCAL television station says it’s adding half a dozen positions, and new newscasts to an existing local cable channel.
KOAA –TV announced today that it is beefing up its 24 hour local weather channel to include three local newscasts per day. The station says that starting in June, it will provide daily newscasts at 4, 7 and 9pm on Comcast channel 9 in Colorado Springs and channel 247 in Pueblo.
Posted by Eric Whitney on March 5, 2007 5:54 PM | Permalink
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