More terrible news from the front line of the newspaper industry, as Media News Corp. yeterday handed pink slips to seven employees at the Daily News and three at the Press-Telegram.  Night reporter Brenda Duran was let go, along with photographer Scott Smeltzer and online content provider Joe Dickson.  The once vibrant newsroom of more than 100 people has been reduced to 26 in just five years, and the staff is now small enough to require just one of the three floors that were previously occupied.

Of course, the Stress Telegram blog – our favorite blog that we wish didn’t have to exist – weighs in on the recent cuts:

Like most of you, we received the news with a mixture of sadness and anger. How can continued attacks on the beleaguered staff possibly have any positive effect on the company’s future?

Our heart goes out to everyone affected by these layoffs, and we want to offer our sincere condolences, and an assurance that we will continue to fight for our remaining members.

“Remaining members” just has an eerie tone to it, no?  This announcement is just the most recent answer to the question we posed about a week ago, and that was even before the announcement (read about it at the S-T, here) that MediaNews is planning to cut all Los Angeles Newspaper Group copy desk positions by 20%, and then consolidate the remaining into one San Gabriel office.

There’s really no need to pull punches at this point: MediaNews has slashed quality worker after quality worker at the Press-Telegram (and many papers like it) in an effort to ease their own massive debts incurred years ago by behind-the-times management that have only worsened with the crippled economy.  There is no sign of slowing down the firings and MediaNews has hinted time and time again that operations may very well be outsourced to another city.  Another option is cutting back on sections of the paper to save printing costs, and still another would be ceasing to print on certain days of the week.  It sounds ridiculous to think of a five or six day-a-week newspaper, or a Long Beach newspaper produced outside of Long Beach, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t real.

Worse still, a Stress-Telegram report from yesterday’s meeting seems to show that proactive thinking is all but gone in the P-T offices:

In the meeting, a staffer asked Rich Archbold if the company has a plan for the future, and where the company is headed. We’re told he had no answer to either question.

By Ryan ZumMallen, Managing Editor