New Haven Independent

The announcement came Wednesday during a mid-day staff meeting in the newsroom. It caught staffers by surprise.

Until now, the Register avoided the layoffs sweeping newsrooms across the country. The Hartford Courant, for instance, has been shedding reporters like a snake shedding skin. The layoffs have occurred not because daily newspapers are losing money. In fact, some of the media companies shedding reporters and photographers continue to earn double-digit profit margins that are the envy of other industries. The newsroom shrinkage is happening for two other reasons: Demands by Wall Street for ever-higher returns. And competition from Internet advertising that has cut somewhat into the newspapers’ still-high profits.

The activist group MoveOn.org has taken on the issue, charging that media companies have a responsibility to cover communities fully.

The Register’s parent company, the New Jersey-based Journal Register Co., has done as much newsroom-slashing as any other company. But until now it has managed to eliminate positions through attrition, leaving jobs unfulfilled after people leave, rather than laying off people.

That’s why yesterday’s surprise announcement made staffers nervous. A line had been crossed.

They also felt badly for Flaum and Malafronte, valued veterans of a fleet of staff shutterbugs considered as strong as any in Connecticut.

Malafronte has worked at the paper for 10 years. A single mom, she has two children, ages 8 and 5.

“From what I understand, it wasn’t a personal thing,” Malafronte said Thursday. “They make a ton of money,” she said of the company. “They make money every year. Our corporate officers get bonuses. They’re cutting from the bottom. When people leave, they don’t rehire. Everybody’s doing several jobs to fill in. They’ve cut down the size of the paper. They’ve cut the amount of news in the paper.

“It’s always been a tough company to work for. But I love my job. I love the people I work with.”

Newsroom colleagues signed a letter offering to forgo raises in order to preserve the photogs’ jobs, Malafronte said. She was touched, but doesn’t expect the decision to change. The layoffs take effect Jan. 14, she said. She said the company told her she would receive some severance but had no details yet. Malafronte recently started a side photography business. (Click here to learn more about it.)

Register Editor Jack Kramer told Malafronte and Flaum the news shortly before the staff meeting Wednesday. Kramer, a sympathetic longtime employee in the newsroom, declined comment for this article. “I felt bad for Jack while he was sitting there” delivering the news, Malafronte said. “I know he didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“We were the last ones hired, so were the first fired,” said Flaum. “I’m still in shock.” Flaum, who’s 31, has worked at the paper for five years.

The Journal Register Co., which owns 27 dailies and more than 300 other newspapers across the country, most recently reported $11.8 million in net earnings for the third quarter of 2005. It reported earning $12.2 million for the same quarter in 2004, or one penny more per diluted share. Ad revenues reportedly dropped 1 percent nationally from the same period in 2004; the percentage year-to-date drop was smaller.

The state of mainstream corporate newspapers has reporters across the country feeling glum. Fortunately, there’s a happier trend of grassroots, community-committed reporting developing across the country: not-for-profit, “hyperlocal” online journalism. Check it out.