Gannett Co. Inc, parent company of The Des Moines Register and Iowa City Press-Citizen, announced today that it would institute another round of employee furloughs during the second quarter of 2009.

Sources inside the Register’s newsroom confirmed that they were notified Monday morning, although most said they saw the news coming months ago when the first round of furloughs was announced.

“This is not news to us,” one employee said.

In a memo to staff, Gannett CEO Craig Dubow said the company would begin the second quarter “without any real relief in sight from this unprecedented economic downturn and its challenge to our company.”

The company had to decide between more layoffs (more than 2,000 employees were let go in 2008) and more furloughs (every employee was mandated to take a one week unpaid furlough during the first quarter of 2009).

“We chose, for most employees, a furlough program consisting of at least one week of unpaid leave to be taken in April, May or June,” Dubow said.

For Gannett newspapers like The Register, salaried employees must take one full week at one time while hourly employee must take five days over the course of the three-month quarter. Employees who earn over $90,000 will take a second week of unpaid leave.

UPDATE: The Des Moines Register becomes one of the first Gannett papers to report on the latest round of company-wide furloughs and adds one new detail: the 1,000 full- and part-time employees at The Des Moines Register, the Iowa City Press-Citizen and the Register’s weekly papers will have their wages frozen for at least one year.