Belo Starts Layoffs Today; 500 Expected to Go

A.H. Belo, the parent company of The Dallas Morning News and Providence Journal, said it will begin its layoffs today.

Belo had announced in January that it intends to release 500 employees throughout its company, which represents about 14 percent of its workforce.

Specific numbers for each of its properties have not been released, but the company has announced most of the layoffs will take place today and tomorrow.

"Our company continues to face unprecedented economic challenges during this prolonged recession, making this staff reduction a very difficult but necessary decision," said Jim Moroney, publisher and chief executive of The Dallas Morning News.

The cuts come after A.H. Belo said last week it will cut some workers' salaries and suspend pension contributions for the year. Full-time employees making more than $25,000 per year will see salary cuts of between 2.5 percent and 15 percent, depending on their base salary. The changes will go into effect around the beginning of May.

Belo's Providence Journal Lays Off 100 Employees

An additional 100 Providence Journal workers are to be laid off by March 6 by A.H. Belo, Sheila Lennon of the Journal writes today.

The Dallas company that bought the newspaper in 1996. The Journal reported the impending layoffs Jan. 31 (A.H. Belo, owner of the The Providence Journal, plans to cut 500 jobs) but today we learned how many of those lost jobs would be in Providence. (A.H. Belo's other newspapers are the Dallas Morning News, Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise and the Denton (Texas) Record-Chronicle.)

In the newsroom we learned exactly which jobs would be cut from the Providence Newspaper Guild, the union that represents reporters, editors and advertising staffers, and slightly more than half of the jobs to be eliminated. Printed as always on bright yellow paper, the bulletin detailing the cuts was hand-delivered by Guild representatives this afternoon to each desk: 100 jobs to be cut at ProJo.

The Journal will cut all 26 part-time positions and eight full-time positions in the Advertising Department. The News Department will lose 18 full-time positions.

The remaining job cuts are to come from management, production and other non-Guild positions.

This time, no reporters were eliminated; photographers, artists, designers, visual techs, editors and editorial assistants bear the brunt of the News department cuts. On Oct. 10, 31 news staffers were laid off; 12 others had earlier taken voluntary buyouts.