With BusinessWeek announcing staff cut backs set to swallow an entire third of its operation and The Associated Press shelving some 90 employees, last week wasn't a great one for those in journalism industry. And then to top it all off, Friday, The Washington Post went and put the boot in, cutting a so far unspecified number of staff members working for the newspaper's website, washingtonpost.com, Webnewser reported.

Current rumours circulating put the figure at somewhere between 10 and 12 members of staff. According to POLITICO reporter, Michael Calderone's sources, those dismissed include two award-winning multimedia journalists, Travis Fox and Pierre Kattar. In a general statement to the publication, Post spokesperson Kris Coratti commented:

"As part of the work we're doing to turn around the business that supports our journalism, there were a small number of individual positions eliminated as a result of efficiencies we have found through our new structure and through new technology, and those have taken place both in print and online".

The cutbacks come at a time when the publication is in the process of merging its online and print operations - thus providing the opportune moment to downsize on the staffing front. Yet Reuters' Robert MacMillan attributes further factors to the timing of these job cuts:

"The company, all my sources tell me, want to cut staff before the end of the year because next year the remainder would become unionized. Web staff are not unionized now. That, my sources say, would make it much more difficult for the money-losing Washington Post to cut costs by laying off people because they would be protected to some extent by their contract."

Sources: Webnewser, POLITICO