Schenectady (N.Y.) Gazette: Lays off 12 staffers

http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2007/06/18/daily32.html?t=printable

Gazette lays off 12 staffers
The Business Review (Albany) - 2:43 PM EDT Thursday, June 21, 2007

The Daily Gazette in Schenectady has cut 12 people from its staff.

Dan Beck, general manager of the family-owned publication, blamed "adverse business conditions" for the layoffs. He said jobs were cut across the board in the editorial, advertising, circulation and production departments. This puts employment at the Gazette, which has weekday circulation of about 48,600, at 170 full-time people.

"It is very unfortunate, very difficult," he said.

According to the Newspaper Association of America, spending on newspaper print advertising was down 6.4 percent nationwide in the first quarter of 2007. The biggest drop was in classified advertising, which slid 13 percent.

Meanwhile, spending on newspaper Web sites rose 22 percent in the first quarter. The Gazette, however, does not have a Web site that is available to the general public. Its site contains an electronic version of the print edition, and is available only to paid subscribers.

Beck said the newspaper is working on a new Web site and "we'll have an announcement soon."

 

"Fuckin' Chrysler plant here I come."

 

I've always really liked that paper. It's got that messy old-printing-press look, unappealing design and I've never thought the writing was all that good, but it always seemed to take news seriously, tried to be a "real" newspaper that offered a complete report, local, national, even more foreign that a paper that size normally would. No gimmicks. Like if you were marooned on an island, and this was the newspaper that washed ashore every day in a bottle, you'd stay reasonably informed. And circ really isn't down that much from peak. I applied there in the early 1980s and circ was about 60K. And it's in a competitive market, next to Albany. Sorry to read this.

 

I agree with Frank. I'm surprised and very sorry to hear about this. One of the better papers in the state, in my opinion

 

Little papers usually are bare-bones to begin with. Cuts at bigger papers make more sense because they usually have excess fat (i.e. national writers). But not at papers like these.