Local Traditions Mean Jack To The Bottom Line

Cartoonist Brian Duffy among the staff let go by The Des Moines Register.

Duffy’s departure could mean the end of a tradition at the paper of front-page editorial cartoons dating back to 1906. The paper has won numerous Pulitzers for its editorial cartoons, including work by Jay Norwood Darling and the legendary Frank Miller. The Register is currently the only paper in the country that still runs a cartoon on its front page.

I've never thought of Duffy as a great cartoonist, but that's cold. More on the current Register layoffs. 4 months ago in August, Gannett laid off 1000 other newspaper staff nationally, including 26 positions at the DMR including Jane Norman, the only person making up the Register's so called Washington Bureau.

The Gannett Company, owner of the Register, as well as USA Today and god-knows how many other papers, and the original McPaper institution, is laying off somewhere between 10-20% of it's payrolls. The Gannett Blog is tracking everything if you want the full skinny.

And the foamy whipped cream topping? CNN canned it's entire Science & Technology reporting unit.

Update: It's even worse. Political columnisthack David Yepsen, Iowa's version of David Broder, has been loudly seeking a job in Illinois as the head of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute. They also have cut the Sunday Opinion section from 6 to 4 pages, dumped all the book reviews (which were canned anyway), and re-sized the physical paper layout and stock to cut costs.