Reporter Lisa Colonno, sports copy editor Brian Granger and sports reporter Dan McCool were laid off Thursday, joining director of photography Don Tormey, news editor Suzanne Behnke, designer Scott Lester, features writer Dawn Sagario, writer Mary Challender and writer Kathy Hickman.

Two sources have also confirmed that the paper’s Iowa City bureau has been closed and reporter Erin Jordan and photographer Harry Baumert have also been let go. The Register’s parent company, Gannett Co. Inc., also owns the Iowa-City Press Citizen.

Several other employees received demotions, including editors Larry Ballard and Kathy Bolton, and investigative reporter Lee Rood. (UPDATE: While originally reported that Register investigative reporter Lee Rood was demoted, Rood tells the Iowa Independent that she was not demoted and she did not receive a pay cut. Her job did not change).

Sources inside the Register tell the Iowa Independent the newsroom layoffs include director of photography Don Tormey, news editor Suzanne Behnke, designer Scott Lester, features writer Dawn Sagario, writer Mary Challender and writer Kathy Hickman. Several other newsroom employees were let go but their names could not be confirmed. There were also layoffs in advertising, production, circulation, marketing, information technology and finance.

The cuts, which were the first of 2009 after 100 newspaper jobs in Iowa were cut in 2008, came at the direction of The Register’s parent company, Gannet Co. Inc. Nationwide, Gannett plans to eliminate 1,400 jobs.

Below is the memo Register Publisher Laura Hollingsworth sent to employees this afternoon:

All,

This has been a difficult week for all of us at The Des Moines Register.

As you know last week Gannett announced layoffs due to the continuing economic downturn. Locally, a total of 36 Des Moines Register employees and six employees at our Central Iowa and Marengo weekly operations are impacted. Departments affected include advertising, production, circulation, marketing, information technology, finance and the news staff.

I understand the financial and emotional impact of this action and I know that all of our thoughts are with these employees and their families.

I know I can count on you to continue to support each other.  Please see your department manager if you have specific questions or concerns.   Again, I invite anyone who wishes to talk with me directly to contact me at any time.

I remain optimistic.   This economy will turn and we’ll be ready to move with it when it does.

With appreciation, LH

Laura L. Hollingsworth
President and Publisher
The Des Moines Register
West Group President
Gannett U.S. Community Publishing

Laura Hollingsworth, president and publisher of The Des Moines Register, told employees in a memo last week that the cuts were coming, though the size and scope was still unknown. Robert Dickey, president of Gannett U.S. Community Publishing, said most layoffs would be finalized by Thursday as part of a companywide staff reduction of 1,400 employees. In 2008, the Register eliminated 70 positions.

Gannett’s other Iowa paper, the Iowa City Press-Citizen, announced Wednesday that it was laying off four employees. There will also be changes to the paper’s circulation staff due to a new agreement with the Cedar Rapids Gazette to print and distribute the Press-Citizen.

Dubow made the comments at the UBS Investment Bank 36th Annual Global Media Conference in New York City. Any future layoffs would be determined by the health of the economy next year.

“We are always going to size to the revenue that is there,” Dubow said, adding that decisions will be made market-by-market. “We’re going to have to see where and how the economy reacts next year.”

The company recently cut 10 percent from its newspaper payroll, including 82 jobs in Iowa.

The layoffs are in several departments including advertising, editorial, production, circulation and finance.

Gannett Co., which owns the Press-Citizen, announced in October plans to cut 10 percent from its payroll at each of its 85 daily newspapers. Wednesday, the Gannett-owned Des Moines Register, Indianola Record-Herald and Altoona Herald announced a total of 71 job cuts.

According to a tally being kept by Jim Hopkins at GannettBlog, Gannett’s downsizing has now claimed 1,770 newspaper jobs nationwide thus far. More layoffs are expected to be announced.

Sources inside the Register’s newsroom confirmed to the Iowa Independent that the layoffs will affect “The Newspaper Iowa Depends Upon,” although no details are available at this time.

“People are upset because they are planning the layoffs right before Christmas,” one employee said. “They should just go ahead and get it over with so people won’t have to worry about it for the next two months.”

Since August, Gannett has eliminated 1,000 jobs at its 84 daily newspapers. Register Editor Carolyn Washburn told the staff layoffs were coming at the beginning of August, and by Aug. 19 several veterans of the newsroom were either let go or accepted buyout packages. However, most were well aware that unless Gannett’s financial situation improved dramatically, more job cuts were a foregone conclusion.

Gannett announced Friday that its third-quarter profits fell 32 percent as advertising revenue declined.

Below is the memo from Gannett Newspaper Division President Bob Dickey, first posted by Jim Hopkins at Gannett Blog:

To: [U.S. Community Publishing newspaper division] Publishers & General Managers

As all of you are painfully aware, the fiscal crisis is deepening and the economy is getting worse. Gannett’s revenues continue to be severely impacted by this downturn, and our local operations are suffering. While we are doing our best to reduce all non staff-related expenses, I am sorry to report that we must do another round of layoffs across our division.

To that end, we will institute an involuntary staff reduction of approximately 10% by the first week of December. The terms of the severance will be one week for each year of service with a cap of 26 weeks.

Each publisher is responsible for developing their local plan to achieve the expected goal. Decisions will be made locally because each of our markets is unique, with differing market conditions and individual needs in light of our previous reductions.

I have asked that all plans be completed by Nov. 14 at which time they will go through the standard review process.

I fully understand this announcement will cause you concern but I felt that once a decision was made it should be communicated as quickly as possible.

While this is more bad news, it is a sign of Gannett’s determination to remain healthy and viable as a company during these turbulent economic times. We continue to be a leader in our industry, not only because of our fiscal strength but also because we have a plan to aggressively grow the company when the economy returns.

To that end, I encourage you to contact me with your thoughts and ideas. We need to grow revenue as well as continue to find efficiencies. I would appreciate your help and ideas on both fronts.

My e-mail address is rdickey@gannett.com. I promise you will be heard and receive a timely response.

I appreciate your understanding and commitment during these challenging times.

Thank you.

The company, which owns 85 daily and 900 non-daily newspapers, as well as 23 television stations, announced that it has purchased another 10 percent stake in CareerBuilder.com from Tribune Co., making it the majority owner of what it says is the nation’s largest online job site with a 50.8 percent controlling interest.

“We are committed to CareerBuilder and want the team there to continue to do what they do best: grow the company, bring in revenues and deliver the best customer service in the jobs space. We don’t expect any major changes,” said [Craig Dubow, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Gannett Co.].

Last month Gannett announced plans to eliminate 1,000 newspaper jobs, including 26 at The Register and four at the Press-Citizen.

The Des Moines Register's headquarters at 8th Street and Locust Avenue in downtown Des Moines.

Expenses were up and revenues were down, and despite a great deal of effort to avoid turning to job cuts, Washburn said there was nothing more she could do.

Since then, the paper’s parent company, Gannett Co., announced that 1,000 jobs would be eliminated companywide, including 600 layoffs. Two weeks after Washburn’s announcement, Laura Hollingsworth, president and publisher of The Des Moines Register, delivered the news everyone had been dreading: 12 full-time and three part-time positions would be eliminated. Another 11 vacant positions would not be filled.

The first to go were Farm Editor and 30-year Register veteran Jerry Perkins and award-winning feature writer Ken Fuson, both of whom took buyouts. Next up were Jane Norman from The Register’s Washington bureau; S.P. Dinnen, a senior business writer; Jeff Bash; the paper’s multimedia graphics editor; Mike Malloy, a sports reporter; and community newspaper contributor, and Carl Benskin, who worked in the newsroom’s production department.

With friends and colleagues leaving, many inside the newsroom of “The Newspaper Iowa Depends Upon” are feeling the strain, and morale has sunk to what some say is an all-time low.

“We’ve been through cuts before, but we run a pretty lean newsroom and have made money for Gannett,” said one veteran Register reporter. “Also, The Register has historically been a strong, award-winning paper with a national reputation. Those seemed to insulate us from the drastic cuts they did to some of the other papers they downsized. We thought that Gannett wouldn’t dare gut us so badly, that they wouldn’t want to be seen as destroying a great paper. Wrong assumption.”

Register executives did not respond to attempts to get comments for this story.

Most of the newsroom employees contacted for this story said they appreciated the fact that Washburn has been candid with them from the beginning about the challenges the paper faces. But the reality of the situation, as well as the way in which the layoffs were handled, has some upset.

“I’m glad they said something to us early on,” said a reporter who has been with the paper only a short time. “But when the memo came out on a Friday, we were left with the weekend to wonder if we had jobs on Monday when we came back. This dark cloud was hanging over our heads, and really, it hasn’t gone away.”

Another employee said he witnessed a young staffer led down to the Human Resources Department by their boss.

“The employee thought, this is it; I’m being fired,” he said.

But as it turns out, the staffer was simply being given a different job assignment, and when the employee asked why their boss didn’t say something beforehand, his response was reportedly, “I was told not to do that.”

In the memo to staff, Hollingsworth said that while there were no plans for further staff reductions at this time, she could not say definitively that the layoffs were over. One newsroom employee said most understand that it’s no longer a matter of whether more cuts will come, but when.

“People who have poured their lives into the newspaper for a couple of decades now are wondering when the axe will fall on them,” he said. “A decade or two back, they never would have wondered that, because they worked hard, never worrying whether they were putting in more hours than they were being paid for. Now they are wondering whether the next round of job cuts will come before Christmas or right after Christmas.”

Fuson, a 24-year Register veteran, said the atmosphere in the newsroom is just what most would expect.

“There’s a lot of sadness about colleagues who lost jobs, and plenty of fear and concern for the future,” he said, adding: “What I don’t see is any less commitment to the work. People here are working like crazy to adapt to this new age. I recently covered a story at the State Fair. A photographer was shooting the event with a video camera and a still camera – at the same time. I joked that he’ll have cymbals on his legs next year. I’m not sure how we could have done much better covering the Postville raid, the Parkersburg tornado and the spate of floods. I was as proud of our effort as anything I’ve ever seen here.”

When describing the mood inside the newsroom, several longtime employees brought up the closure of the afternoon Des Moines Tribune in 1982, a move that cost 60 journalists their jobs when the staffs of the Tribune and Register were merged.

“There’s always been a feeling that corporate cares more about profit margins and taking care of the top executives than editorial excellence and taking care of the rank and file, but the gloom and doom now is unprecedented in my time,” one newsroom veteran said. “I can only compare it to the cuts made when the Tribune folded. The way things are going, that period might turn out to be the good old days.”

Another employee described the newsroom as much quieter than it used to be.

“And it’s not like when the Tribune closed. That one blindsided us,” he said. “This time, everyone is aware of circulation problems and we have, I think, come to accept the realities of corporate America.”

While morale is certainly low, the newsroom is still committed to putting out a quality paper.

“People are busting their behinds to do good work,” one employee said. “It would be a lie to say morale is good this week, but I’ve seen it worse. The pendulum always seems to swing back, and I’m thinking it will again.”

In July Gannett reported a 36-percent plunge in second-quarter profits. The company earned $233 million in the second quarter, compared with $366 million in the same period a year ago. After announcing the job cuts, the stock immediately jumped 11 percent, but then just as quickly dropped back 10 percent.

Gannett does not break down earnings by individual paper, so the financial solvency of The Register is hard to quantify. But the paper’s circulation figures, like those of newspapers around the country, are pointing downward. Circulation has fallen virtually every year since 1994, when The Register’s daily circulation stood at 184,959 and Sunday at 318,542. By 2007 those numbers had fallen to 146,050 daily and 233,229 on Sundays.

Fuson, who has been quick to point out that it was his choice to take a buyout and that he wasn’t forced to leave, said the resilience of the newsroom in the face of a difficult time is inspiring.

“It’s not as bad as when the Tribune closed, but it’s close,” Fuson said. “At the same time, you’ve got people trying desperately to maintain and enhance the Register’s quality and role, not knowing what they’re job is going to look like, or even if they’ll have a job, in six months. It’s actually inspiring to see how much people here still care about the Register.”