• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, March 9, 2009

Hit with a double whammy of secular shifts in media consumption and a sharp economic downturn, McClatchy Co. said Monday it will cut another 15% of its workforce--equaling about 1,600 positions, beginning in the next couple of weeks. It will also cut salaries across the board, including a 15% reduction for Chairman and CEO Gary Pruitt.

In addition, McClatchy executives are forgoing bonuses in 2009, and the company has also reduced compensation to its board of directors by 13%.

In announcing its fourth-quarter earnings in February, McClatchy said it was developing a plan to reduce costs, but gave no details as to what that might entail. However, it was clearly a warning that further job cuts were coming. The cost-cutting campaign also includes freezing pension plans and temporary suspension of matching contributions to 401(k) plans.

After the first quarter, the company is also suspending its quarterly dividend.

The latest round of cuts will bring McClatchy's total number of full-time equivalent employees down to under 10,000 from about 11,500. Like other big newspaper publishers beset by competition from the Internet, McClatchy has already seen various rounds of job cuts through attrition, buyouts and layoffs. Since 2006, counting the current layoff, the company will have trimmed its workforce by 41%-- from about 16,800 to about 9,900.

Sadly, McClatchy has plenty of company. In 2000, Gannett's newspaper division employed about 41,000 people; now, although the company does not release head counts, it probably has 29,000 or less--meaning that it cut about 30% of its original workforce. The vast majority of these were cut in the last two years, including almost 5,000 in 2007 and 4,000 or more in 2008.

The Tribune Co. has also wielded the ax. From a total of 25,600 employees in 2001, after its acquisition of the Times Mirror Co. in March 2000, the company slimmed down to around 18,000 at the end of 2008. Like Gannett, that's about 30% of the original workforce. The New York Times Co. cut its workforce from 13,800 employees in 2000 to around 10,200 at the end of 2008. That's 3,600, or 26% of the original workforce.