Another round of layoffs

How -- weird? ironic? sad? depressing? -- that the same room where we've celebrated five Pulitzer Prizes since 1999 is the same room we'd gather for two staff meetings earlier this week for a Q&A session on the latest buyout offer to newsroom staff at The Oregonian.

Editor Sandy Rowe and Executive Editor Peter Bhatia, who only a year earlier were honored by Editor & Publisher magazine as the newspaper industry's Editors of the Year, were there along with a couple of folks from the Human Resources Department, to answer questions about the offer, which was formally unveiled at the end of last week.

They took questions about insurance benefits, furlough days, pay cuts, a pending newsroom reorganization, etc., on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, answering as best as they could while sharing in the pervasive sense of accumulated despair. Advertising revenues continue to fall short of projections and who can say at this point whether the primary reason is the recession, which has left Oregon with a 12.2 percent unemployment rate, or a failure to better plan for and transition to a new revenue model based on the Internet. No doubt it's both of those factors.

Who foresaw the collapse of the automobile and housing industries, two of the three pillars of classified advertising? The third? Employment (aka "help wanted").

The first two buyouts, it seemed, were received with a certain amount of inevitability, given the weak national economy and the precedents elsewhere; virtually every U.S. metro newspaper has trimmed its staff through buyouts or layoffs or both. This time around, the mood in the room seemed downright somber.

Younger folks, with less invested in the company and seemingly more options to consider, are cutting short their careers even before they've had a chance to really get going. Case in point: Elizabeth Suh, who just a year out of college was part of the 2007 Pulitzer team that won for breaking news, notched her last day at The Oregonian on Friday. She's enrolled in pre-med courses at Portland State and I'm sure she'll become a fine physician.

Older staffers like me, in their mid to late 50s and with 20 years or more of service, face a different challenge. Is six months' salary, plus up to six months of unused sick time, enough to give up a competitive salary and generous benefits in order to launch a job search in this market? If we stay, are we just stringing out the inevitable? Layoffs could follow sometime next spring if the company doesn't stabilize.

These aren't easy decisions for anyone. And while I feel badly for my peers, who want only to be able to continue the work that is their passion, I also tip my hat to Sandy and Peter. They're at the top of the pyramid of a great, great newsroom that they've led together for 15 years and now are charged with dismantling and remaking it to fit the smaller size of the staff while maintaining the high journalistic standards readers have come to expect.

It's gotta be painful.