If You're Feeling Sinister

Gannet's (publisher of USA Today) more than 80 local newspapers will soon seem a lot lonelier. In the next few days, they are expected to shed between one and two thousand jobs.

That, of course, is a ridiculous number. With $3.7 billion in debt during the first quarter, Gannet decided that a workforce of 41,500 is too much. Maybe the only solace is that this probably doesn't come as a surprise to its employees, as the company also cut 4,600 jobs last year. Actually, fear of impending doom isn't really comforting at all.

Obviously two years in on that elusive Bachelors of Science in Journalism, I take the news on the end of the news quite seriously. When I first committed to the major a few years back, I knew money wouldn't be tight and it would be a labor of love. And that's an offer I'd take again in a heartbeat, but now it's a fight to even get that low-paying job. Although it's not quite what I signed up for, I, and I hope most others, knew this collapse was at least a possibility.

We're told endlessly in classes that things will rebound. I'm not sure how much I buy that, especially since most professors, by definition, haven't actually done the craft in a long time. They've written about journalism, taught how it should be done and probably stay very up to date on the news, but I'm a firm believer that this field cannot be taught in a classroom. My teachers put on a hopeful face, and I guess I appreciate it, but when the biggest publisher by circulation lays off about 15 percent of its employees in the past year, well, I wonder what other skills I have. It's a sobering thought.

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Gannett Will Cut More Than 1,000 Jobs (WSJ)