There are no ulterior motives behind staff reductions...

I hope I can set the record straight here: our current lay-offs at the Elk Grove Citizen have absolutely nothing to do with the John Danielson executive pay and compensation piece published in the Wednesday, March 18th issue of the Citizen.
Our newspaper and our parent company, Herburger Publications, Inc., are just like every other news organization across the nation - we're facing tough times. I am not here to fool you. It's true and thankfully, our cuts have been limited. In the past several months, our company has had to make some lay-offs in a few different departments.
I was informed by Publisher David Herburger several weeks ago that he had to adjust to the current economic climate and the loss of advertising revenue and assess our staffing levels; that was if he possibly had to make any lay-offs. We all hoped for the best, but did not know what to expect.
Unfortunately, at the end of that assessment, a lay-off in the Citizen editorial staff was made. It is a very unfortunate situation to be in; and I can firmly say that when these types of moves are made, it is done with the utmost responsibility and care and concern for any employee who may be laid-off or let go due to the poor economic climate.
Nobody wants to be in these positions and another unfortunate aspect of this lay-off was that it was timed to coincide with the publication of what has become a controversial story in the community - the amount of compensation received by former Elk Grove city manager John Danielson.
I would like to stress one thing: our staff reductions had absolutely nothing to do with this article or any reaction or response to it. It is purely unlucky coincidence that these two incidents happened in the same week.
I hope that this post - and an opinion piece to be published in the March 25 edition of the Citizen - will put an end to the untrue, false rumors spreading around the online community and Elk Grove.

Jeff Forward
Editor, the Citizen