The Boston Globe plays it straight in covering the news of its buyout-based staff reduction. As reported earlier, 60 jobs will be axed at the Globe and 20 at the Worcester Telegram. That’s on top of the 125 jobs cut at the papers a year ago. The amazing tidbit in this story is this line: “Globe employees who received lifetime job guarantees in the early 1990s will be given three weeks pay for each year of service, capped at two years’ pay.” Lifetime job guarantees?

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Newsday is cutting 120 jobs, or about five percent of its workforce. The cuts include about 25 editorial employees, along with 24 pressroom positions. The head of the local union is quoted in the article wondering how a paper on an island of 3 million people can have only 400,000 circulation. “That just tells me that Newsday is not putting effort into growing circulation,” he said. He should read the papers more often.

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The Los Angeles Daily News is cutting 22 people from its newsroom staff, or nearly 20% of its editorial workforce. This story got considerably less attention than layoffs at rival Los Angeles Times, but in percentage terms, the cuts are much deeper. The Times still has 850 newsroom employees. The Daily News’ editorial staff has been cut by about half from its peak level, according to a story in the LA Times. The Times’ story wraps up the recent carnage at California newspapers and laments the loss of local reporting. It quotes a local public official as saying, “I think people are losing any understanding of what local government does and how it figures in people’s lives.

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Meanwhile, graphic designer Erica Smith has created a Google Maps mashup of newspaper layoffs going back nearly a year.

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