After months of reporting on the deteriorating economy and countless job losses, The Honolulu Advertiser was at the receiving end this month of news coverage following the layoffs of 54 employees, four of them in the newsroom.

It probably couldn't be helped, but the coverage seemed to blur two distinct story lines: the unfortunate economic conditions that have forced dozens of media companies to downsize and our ongoing labor negotiations that are more than a year old.

The timing is admittedly terrible when job reductions come in the midst of contentious labor talks, but even if the contract had been settled and both sides had been satisfied with the results, the loss of employees still would have occurred.

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the newspaper business realizes that 2008 has not been kind to an industry that relies on advertising, particularly classified and retail advertising, to keep it afloat. Take your pick of any major media company — Tribune Co., The New York Times Co., MediaNews Group, the Hearst Corp., the McClatchy Co., Gannett Co. Inc., which owns The Advertiser — and all have faced significant job cuts.

Consider this lead paragraph from a story in The New York Times:

"In the last 18 months, employment in the nation's newspaper industry has fallen on a scale not seen since the worst days of the Depression."

That story was published in 1991. It cited Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers that showed that more than 20,000 total newspaper jobs were lost between June 1990 and September 1991.

Those might well be considered the good old days.

Just last month, The Times reported that "this year is taking shape as the worst on record, with a double-digit drop in advertising revenue, raising serious questions about the survival of some papers and the solvency of their parent companies."

The McClatchy Co. said in June that it would eliminate 1,400 jobs, or 10 percent of its workforce. McClatchy's Sacramento Bee lost 86 jobs, The Miami Herald reduced its staff by 250, The Kansas City Star announced 120 job cuts, The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., cut 70 positions. At the Tribune Co., the Los Angeles Times cut 150 jobs from the newsroom alone, the Chicago Tribune slashed 80 newsroom positions, and The (Baltimore) Sun eliminated 100 jobs, including 55 from the newsroom.

At Cox Newspapers, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is cutting nearly 200 jobs, 85 from the newsroom. The Palm Beach Post, also owned by Cox, is cutting 300 jobs, nearly half from editorial. Similar cuts have been made in the past few months (or are about to be made) at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Tampa Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Orlando Sentinel, the Hartford Courant, Newsday, The Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press, The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Daily News and so on.

By some accounts, some 2,000 newsroom jobs have been lost since the beginning of the year. The reasons for such a seismic shift (and the accompanying freefall in media stock prices) are complex, but mainly have to do with a lousy economy, the relatively small stream of print revenue switching to online newspaper Web sites, a younger generation abandoning the print product and other factors.

Although The Advertiser went through a round of buyouts almost a year ago, further reductions were necessary and we held out as long as we could before taking action, knowing that whatever we did would be seen through the prism of stalled negotiations. Labor talks will continue but our focus now is on those dedicated employees leaving us in the next few weeks, victims of an industry that has claimed far too many jobs.

Mark Platte is senior vice president/editor of The Advertiser. Reach him at mplatte@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8080.