Fort Myers: Hudler said warning up to 80 jobs going

The News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla., will eliminate between 60 and 80 jobs — as much as 13% of all — as the paper races to comply with Corporate’s demands for a broad workforce reduction across the newspaper division by early next month, readers are now telling me.

Publisher Carol Hudler, who also is chief of Gannett’s South group of papers, disclosed the figures to employees yesterday, without identifying individual victims. I’d been waiting until now for further confirmation before publishing any hard numbers.

On the high end, the 80 jobs would include 20 unoccupied positions — resulting in 60 forced layoffs, readers say. What’s more, those 80 would represent more than 13% of the News-Press‘ total workforce, based on the paper’s official company page — a higher percentage than forecast. That may mean Hudler had fewer well-paid workers to choose from, so was forced to target more, lower-paid employees.

Earlier: our new paper-by-paper list of late-2008 layoffs

How are you preparing for the 10% cut? Post replies in the comments section, below. E-mail gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.