Citizen-Times employees to be furloughed in first quarter of 2010

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

1

Here’s part of the Dec. 1 memo sent out by a Gannett boss Bob Dickey. The Asheville Citizen-Times is owned by Gannett. As you will recall, Citizen-Times employees faced furloughs in the first half of this year. This memo comes via Romenesko.

December 1, 2009
To: All US Community Publishing employees
From: Bob Dickey

We are just completing the preliminary budgets for 2010. Thanks to all of your hard work and efforts to keep our costs down this year and create greater efficiencies across the division, we are heading into the new year with some solid improvements under our belt. We have seen some promising trends in advertising with ad declines slowing throughout the year and as we begin the holiday shopping season, we are also seeing some indication that retailers may be spending more on advertising.

While these trends are encouraging, the overall economy is still fragile with a number of business uncertainties. Therefore, as we head into 2010, we think it is prudent to take a conservative approach toward managing our business. Toward that end, we have decided to implement furloughs across USCP during the first quarter. This is not a companywide initiative though Corporate and some of Gannett’s other operations have also decided to put furloughs into place during the first quarter. No one on the Gannett Management Committee makes these decisions lightly and we understand and appreciate the difficulties furloughs have placed on many of you and your families. The furloughs we took companywide this year, however, saved Gannett a significant amount of money and helped us get through what has been unquestionably the toughest time we have ever faced as a company and division.