The Globe and Mail sheds a total of 90 jobs across all departments, and the Halifax Chronicle-Herald hands out layoff notices to almost one-quarter of its newsroom.
"It's a terrible day," Dan Leger, the Halifax newspaper's director of news content, said Tuesday. "It's an absolutely horrible day.
"This is something we fought tooth and nail to resist but the numbers just kept getting worse and worse and worse and we just don't know where they're going to end."
The newspaper didn't specify how many people are affected but Rick Conrad, vice-president of the Halifax Typographical Union, said 24 of 103 reporters, editors and photographers will receive notices.
The Globe said Tuesday it laid off 30 people, although the number had been expected to be higher when the national newspaper originally outlined plans to cut the paper's workforce by 10 per cent.
Globe and Mail publisher Phillip Crawley told The Canadian Press on Tuesday that 60 staff members opted to take a voluntary severance package - about double what the company had anticipated. ...
The Globe has about 700 employees in various departments, while CTVglobemedia employs about 6,500 workers across all of its divisions, which also include the CTV network and CHUM Radio, one of Canada's largest radio broadcasters.
The article did about the layoffs that have occurred at other Canadian news organizations in the past several months (see my Canadian Journalism in 2008 post).
The Globe didn't break out how many newsroom jobs were lost in the shuffle. But the cut totals about 13 per cent of the paper's total staff.*
* The CP story is unclear if the 700 is post-layoff; if the pre-layoff staff was 790, that would be an 11 per cent cut
The Chronicle-Herald lost 23 per cent of its newsroom staff. That's a big whopping cut.
Leger did go on to say he's willing to talk with the union and see what can be done in terms of voluntary departures to attempt to reduce the number of layoffs. However, he didn't suggest the total headcount reduction could be made smaller.
Crawley said the Globe's fiscal year ends on Aug. 31, and he hoped the cuts would be enough to help the paper weather the remainder of its fiscal year.
And on it goes. :(
Soft landings to all concerned.