The Post-Standard to Cut Jobs

Unless you live in the Syracuse area the odds are good that you do not know much about The Post-Standard and its related web properties. For those of you who are not familiar with the company here is a look at how they have chosen to describe themselves, “We are the destination where Central New Yorkers come together to share, debate, collaborate and create something that benefits everyone.  We provide an essential 24/7 news, information and social interaction network – collecting many sources to inform, engage and entertain. As an organization, we embrace new ideas and innovation. To learn more about syracuse.com, what we stand for and where we’re going, read our company vision statement. syracuse.com is affiliated with The Post-Standard newspaper.”

Sadly the paper is getting ready to make a mass layoff action happen, as they are getting ready to cut back on 115 jobs in order to cut the costs associated with staffing for the organization. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

This is not the first time that newspapers have cuts jobs in order to make things work, for those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed on other cuts in no time at all, “The Boston Globe is a newspaper that is read by many in the Boston metro area. Many people know the newspaper for its reporting, and for the accompanying website. Most of the readers however don’t think of it as an employer, but they are. Well, at least they were for 53 workers who are soon to be cut from the payrolls.”

Even larger cuts have been made at Fairfax Media Limited, where almost 2,000 people lost their jobs. Here is an excerpt from our earlier coverage of those cuts, “For those of you do not follow the world of Australian journalism the company is talking about a real loss of about 1,900 jobs when all of the cuts are said and done. These cuts will not be made in a single wave. The jobs will be cut in smaller stages between now and March of 2013. By that time the company is hoping to move farther away from the print editions it has used in the past and move more towards digital editions and other methods of delivering news.”

The workers were offered an unspecified severance package.