More layoffs ...

Another letter from a Gannett big wig ... I've clipped out the bullshit and left in the meat.

To: U.S. Community Publishing Employees
From: Bob Dickey

I want to talk with you about our restructuring efforts, as we continue to battle these difficult economic conditions and the impact on our advertisers. With your help, our various cost savings initiatives are making a difference.

Each plan is different and designed to address the ongoing local needs. All of them, however, involved extremely difficult decisions. Approximately 1400 employees will be impacted by the job reductions across the division. Your publisher or general manager will communicate the local plans, and we expect the vast majority of the reductions will take place by July 9. In a select few cases, the implementation may take longer. There will not be any furloughs for the rest of the year.

Even so, we know the economy will improve. To be ready, we need to continue our transformation and maintain a strong financial position. We must publish our newspapers, produce our Web sites and pay down our debt. By taking all these steps today, we will be stronger tomorrow.

Measured against our peers in the media industry, we are healthy and capable of moving forward. We are in this position because we have proactively responded to the financial conditions with actions such as these.


... don't know how this will impact our individual paper. But ... guess we'll wait and see.

Wow. Glastonbury images

Some of the most moving festival photos I have ever seen. I can only hope to be half as good as this guy.

See the rest of them here.

More on the "maybe horse"

He is a blended mess of things ... his mom was a Jockey Club TB, and his dad is a mix between Hannovarian, Clydesdale and TB. This particular horse is just 2, about 16.1 ish hands (maybe bigger), and totally unbroke. I'm looking to buy him, and of course train him. Of course it would be close to a year before I got on his back. (But he's more than ready to begin groundwork)

I really like him and the price is right ...

Possible new project?

A possible new project horse ... 2 year old blended warmblood ... opinions?



Oh by the way, I sold T-Bone.

My top 5 picks for MJ's front page

I didn't get to design a front page for Jackson's death ... which makes me probably more sad than the actual death of the guy. But here are my top 5 picks for the best-designed front pages from today:

Some images from Alpine Valley

I don't believe I have ever been to Wisconsin until this weekend, so I can check another state off my list. Two things I learned about the cheese state:

• There is nothing there (except cheese)
• They seem to want to label their roads with letters, like county road D or H. This makes things confusing for those of us from Indiana who are used to odd number roads running North-South, and even number roads running East-West. But letters? Huh?

Anyway, here are some photos from the show(s) this weekend. Of course Phish was good. Duh.

Deer Creek

... too tired ... will blog about awesomeness later. It's off to Alpine Valley now ...