Oregonian owner Newhouse is closing the Newhouse News Service, putting about 24 folks out of work (including, I think, a personal friend of OMI's--checking in with her now).
"As the newspapers were preparing their budgets for 2009, they simply felt they couldn't afford to pay for a central Washington bureau any more," David Starr, Newhouse Newspapers' senior editor, told E&P, adding that the papers preferred to use that money for local coverage.
His reaction to the impending closing? "It's very sad -- not only for these particular papers and these particular people, but for journalism as a whole," said Starr. Unfortunately, he added, closings and layoffs are a "pattern" these days in the newspaper world.
Eleven of the staffers work for Newhouse's papers; I don't know if one of them is the O's.
it's in the Washington Post.