Seven More

In all the excitement of Spanish and centigrade, I almost forgot. My newspaper laid off seven people on Tuesday - one from the newsroom. We were already down, nine in the newsroom, I think it is, since the beginning of the year. It's because the company is doing so bad, or so we were told at the staff meeting where they announced the cuts. Though, at the same time, our Web hits are through the roof. (Only the executive editor was excited by this because none of us sees any correlation from Web hits to income. That's the part the corporate execs haven't quit worked out yet.)

People are more depressed than usual. Everyone is overworked, stressed out, drinking too much, angry a lot. And now THERE IS NO END IN SIGHT. At least before they had hope some of the positions would be replaced. Now there is a hiring freeze on indefinitely. I think the entire floor left the meeting then went directly to looking for new jobs and polishing their resumes.

The next day after the meeting, we get our daily e-letter from corporate, which include a Wall Street Journal article on our company and how our return to shareholders is up 40 cents a share over the previous year's quarter. This further depresses the staff.

I wish Rupert Murdoch would just buy us and get the whole damn thing over with.