Making newsroom cuts an issue

Journalists are leaving newspapers the world over as the advertising recession bites, many of them with leaving pages in hand and redundancy cheques in pockets. Now hacks at one US paper have come up with a novel way of paying tribute to their former colleagues, according to the New York Times. Staff at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where the newsroom has shrunk from about 400 to 250 people in recent years, have taken out a full-page advert in the paper thanking "employees who have left the paper in the past three years". The $3,225 cost was met by many of those who remain, although not everyone wanted to hand over cash to the paper. Presumably they shared the analysis of David Brauer, who writes on local media for the website Minnpost.com, according to the Post – who called it "feeding the hand that bites you".