With all the cyberscare stories about North Korea making headlines these days, the last place you might expect to see job losses is among information security workers.

However, a survey by UK recruiters Barclay Simpson says the number of IT security professionals looking for work has risen 17 percent so far this year, even as the number of new positions has fallen by 57 percent.

"The market has been swollen by candidates whose contracts have come to an end and permanent staff who have been made redundant and are making themselves available for both permanent and contract work," the report finds. 

Hardest hit are more senior and managerial roles, the survey finds, while junior roles are less affected.

Mark Ampleford, head of Barclay Simpson’s IT security unit says: “Information security, despite its current high profile, has not been protected from corporate cost cutting. Q1 and Q2 redundancy levels were high and whilst many departments have vacancies few have permission to recruit.”

Corporate cost-cutting is taking its toll, and not just through layoffs.  Swelling ranks of unemployed security technicians is further dampening salaries and wages, the recruiter says.

Lower level security analysts at banks in the UK start around £30,000. Penetration testers -- pretend hackers who test client networks for vulnerabilities -- can expect between £51,00 and £62,000, the survey's salary data shows.

Day rates for contract intrusion detection specialists working within a government agency start at £250. Business continuity analysts -- those charged with figuring out how to keep the lights on at organisations in crisis -- can expect to make even less, just £200 a day.

This story comes full circle with word from the Guardian that the cyber attacks first thought to orginate in North Korea may actually have orginated in Britain.

(Photo: Reuters/Jo Yong hak)

Tribune Co keeps the layoffs coming at its newspapers as the media company moves through the bankruptcy court process.

The Sun: Over in Baltimore, we heard from a source that 21 editors — including most of the metro editing staff and two top editorial editors — were herded into offices and told they had to exit the building immediately. Editor & Publisher confirms this report and says more cuts might be coming as soon as today. Perhaps there’s a strategy in there, but it’s hard to tell what it is when most big-city dailies have abandoned their ambitious overseas reporting goals, saying their real value to the community is their local reporting franchise. UPDATE: Looks like at least 40 more people are getting laid off as we speak, according to two sources I just spoke to at 3pm eastern.

And another UPDATE: A Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild memo says a whopping 27 percent of the Sun’s staff is getting laid off.

Excerpt from the memo:

“Tribune, through careless management practices, has saddled itself under $13 billion in debt and now Baltimore is paying a price,” said Cet Parks, Executive Director of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. “Tribune is siphoning good jobs from Baltimore and sending work that talented editors, reporters, photographers, copy editors and designers have done here to its home base in Chicago. That is not right.”

Tribune plans to lay off the 40 newsroom employees by May 27. Targeted employees, who include four columnists, photographers, critics and copy editors, received hand delivered letters Wednesday afternoon signed by Monty Cook, senior vice president and editor. Also, in the last two weeks The Sun has laid off seven employees in other departments including advertising and customer service.

Chicago Tribune: The paper said last week that it would cut 11 percent of its newsroom staff. Today’s edition of the Gorkana business journalist career moves e-mail shows that, among others, the Tribune is losing Joshua Boak, financial exchanges and energy reporter. We don’t know if it’s because of the layoffs or if he’s just leaving, but either way, it’s a heck of a time to lose the exchanges beat reporter at one of the hometown papers of the world’s largest futures exchanges.

In other recent examples of unusual layoff situations (there are so many that it’s impossible to count them all here), remember

• The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Suburban Journals of St. Louis reporter who lost his job after taking a bullet for the team.
• The two East Valley Tribune (Arizona) reporter who lost his job before he won a Pulitzer Prize.

Any other weird/bizarre/unfortunate circumstances surrounding journalist layoffs that you know about? Tell us about them.

(Photo: Reuters)

Google may be giving pink slips to some 200 hapless souls, but that’s not stopping the company from hiring in certain places.

The search giant has about 360 job openings listed on its Web site, and a spokesman has confirmed that they are indeed open positions. Only about 30 of the US job openings are for work that appears related to sales and marketing - the kinds of jobs that were impacted by Thursday’s layoffs.

The job openings provide a fascinating window into the inner workings of the vast Google empire, which has a need for everything from a software engineer in Krakow to an account manager in Cairo.

A job listing for a “Peering Coordinator” at Google’s EU headquarters begins with a hint of international intrigue:

“When we’re not planning and designing our next secret data centre, we focus on selecting, negotiating for and acquiring the space, power and networks to expand Google’s global reach,” the ad reads.

Other roles are more pedestrian. A sought-after Transportation Program Manager in Mountain View, California will be tasked with, among other things, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the bike program.

And of course, given that the Google army famously marches on its belly, it’s no surprise that the company wants a Foodservices Supply Chain Manager to report for duty at the Googleplex.

On a somewhat related note, it seems the job of breaking the news of Google’s job cuts to certain employees fell to Tim Armstrong. Armstrong was tapped to be the new CEO of AOL earlier this month, and he has already visited AOL to address the troops. But as he’s still technically at Google during a transition period, Armstrong had one last job to take care of. Read the memo at Business Insider.

(Photo: Reuters)

Rumors of a Yahoo management reshuffling, two newspaper publisher bankruptcies and a bit of PR unsavvy on Microsoft’s part do not make for a quiet weekend. Although not exactly high-octane breaking news, the stuff kept happening in dribs and drabs throughout the weekend, leading me to update my Facebook status thus: “Anupreeta would have liked at least 30 percent more weekend.” But so it goes.

On Friday night, All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher reported that a major Yahoo management reorganization was underway, and could come as early as this week. The Wall Street Journal, which shares an owner — News Corp’s Dow Jones — with All Things D, followed with its own story a day later.

Then, Microsoft — a big employer of foreign workers which took some heat last month from politicians for announcing plans to lay off 5,000 people — dug its heels deeper into the mess. It seems the software giant overpaid some laid-off workers because of an accounting error, and now wants the money back. Yikes. Does Microsoft need to do more damage control than this?

Meanwhile, newspaper publishers continue to collapse like dominoes. On Saturday, Journal Register said it had sought bankruptcy protection, becoming the latest U.S. newspaper company to buckle under a load of debt and falling ad sales. Close on its heels, the Philadelphia Inquirer owner announced it too was filing for Chapter 11 — sending out the press release bang in the middle of Oscars.

Keep an eye on:

• Will Rupert Murdoch’s love of newspapers drag his entire empire down? Maybe, but that isn’t stopping the mogul from looking for alliances to save on costs. (The New York Times)
• Falling DVD sales could hurt the fortunes of media conglomerates. (Financial Times)
• Social networks are a telco’s best friend. (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

Suburban bureau reporters at The Sun in Baltimore, Maryland, are about to learn the true meaning of the word “mobile.” The Tribune Co-owned paper is shutting down the last of its three suburban bureaus and bringing their reporters back to the main newsroom in Baltimore proper, sources told MediaFile on Tuesday.

The paper will outfit them with laptops and Blackberries and will send them back into the field to do their job by car or however else they can get to the story. It is part of wider changes going on at Tribune Co, which is in bankruptcy proceedings because of some $13 billion in debt that it has been unable to deal with because of the increasingly grim advertising sales plaguing newspapers.

Tribune’s chief executive, real estate magnate Sam Zell, was unhappy with the amount of empty space that The Sun has in downtown Baltimore, especially when considering all the space that the paper was renting in the suburbs, one of our sources says. The three bureaus that The Sun will shut down are in Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Howard counties. The Sun’s bureaus in Carroll and Harford counties already closed in the past year. It’s not clear if the two are related, but the three bureaus shutting down now are traditional turf war zones with The Washington Post, which recently said it will begin cooperating with The Sun on some coverage in the counties.

Shutting down bureaus must feel a little like a retreat. On the other hand, it must be nice to not be chained to a desk all day long, as we suspect more mobile journalists — or “MoJos” — are discovering..

The news was delivered in an off-record employee meeting, which also included the news that more buyouts and layoffs are on the way, likely sooner rather than later.

Speaking of personnel issues, Tribune Co Chief Administration Officer Gerald (Gerry) Spector had some bad news for employees: Salary freeze for non-union employees are coming this year. And if you’re in the union? Management will work it out in collective bargaining agreements. This is similar to what News Corp did at Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. It also comes on top of mandatory furloughs at Gannett and other publishers, not to mention a variety of other ways to stay afloat in increasingly stormy seas.

Here’s Spector’s memo, released Monday and obtained through a source:

As you know, this year is off to a difficult start-not only for us, but for our peers in the media industry and for much of the business world as well. The advertising environment is very difficult. The economy is, at best, challenging. Across the country, businesses are cutting jobs, furloughing employees and freezing pay. Some of our major advertising clients, like General Motors, have laid off thousands of employees; others, like Circuit City, have been forced to liquidate assets and go out of business. Obviously, developments like these put significant downward pressure on our revenue.

As a company, we’re fighting back like never before-developing new products, operating extremely efficiently, and re-examining everything we do with an eye toward maximizing our cash flow. However, given current trends and the likelihood that it will take some time for the economy to recover, we have to do even more. For that reason, we’ve decided to implement a salary freeze for non-union employees in 2009. For those employees represented by a union, the issue will be addressed in collective bargaining.

I know this is difficult and I appreciate your understanding. Compensation is our largest expense and a salary freeze enables us to share the sacrifice. Hopefully, freezing salaries now will allow us to avert more drastic action in the future.

Thank you again for all your efforts.
Gerry

(Photo: Reuters)

Who can blame a print reporter for wanting to get up to speed in the new media world, particularly at The New York Times? With ad revenue down and the future in doubt, it might seem worthwhile for reporters to keep themselves marketable. The union that represents the NYT’s reporters approves, but it suspects that some are making too many concessions. Here are excerpts from the memo:

The financial troubles at The New York Times have many Guild members looking over their shoulders wondering when the next round of layoffs may occur…As a result, many of our members are understandably operating in survival mode and scurrying to find a niche.

In this economic climate, the Guild more than ever encourages members to make themselves as valuable as possible. Embrace the web, which undoubtedly holds the key to our future. …

The Guild has learned that some employees are blogging on their own time, working through the wee hours of the night, with no additional compensation. Some are receiving compensation, but only a small portion of what they are owed. Others are simply getting to leave a couple hours early in exchange for their work on the web. As a result of this “Let’s-Make-a-Deal” environment, some employees are taken care of and others are taken advantage of, which is not what being part of a union is all about. …

Management told the Guild during recent negotiations that they needed more flexibility in the workplace if the company is to survive. The Guild understands that it is in our best interest for the paper to thrive and not be so set in our ways. But at this point, it appears as if our members are the only ones who are being flexible and are giving their services away in the process. If overtime budgets are tight, bloggers should be given time during their normal shift to complete an assignment rather than be expected to do it pro bono or play, “Let’s-Make-a-Deal” with their livelihood. The time has come for management to stop preying on our members’ fear and vulnerability, pay our members what they are worth and schedule them appropriately.

When will those layoffs happen? We’re depending on you, New York Times reporters, to tell us. Tips always welcome.

It takes a delicate touch to make job cuts sound more palatable. As U.S. companies reduce payrolls by the thousands, the press releases seem to be getting more and more creative.

Check out today's announcement from The Reader's Digest Association, which is eliminating 8 percent of its global workforce and suspending matching contributions to employees' 401(k) retirement accounts. Somehow it stings a bit less when you tell employees that it's all part of a "Recession Plan" right?

"We have announced a comprehensive 'Recession Plan', which is our internal roadmap for dealing with the extraordinary effects of this recession on consumer spending," Mary Berner, president and CEO, said in a statement.

Then there was Caterpillar, which said earlier this week that it would "remove" 20,000 workers as it executes "strategic 'trough' plans".

Reader's Digest spokesman William Adler said the language wasn't intended to try to soften the blow of something as traumatic as losing a job.

"We're calling it the recession plan internally to encourage not only understanding of it by the employees, but for their interactive participation," he said, adding that the company was encouraging employees to think of ways to cut costs and save money, which was all part of the "recession plan."

"It's not like 'rightsizing,'" Adler said, referring to an infamous U.S. euphemism that many companies in recent years have adopted to describe firing and laying off their employees.

Have we missed any gems? Share your best examples/worst and maybe we'll gather enough for a special 50 Ways to Leave Your (Loving) Employer blog!

(Additional reporting by Robert MacMillan)

The divisions are deepening out in Hollywood – and we’re not talking about the standoff between the Screen Actors Guild and major studios. No, we’re talking about Tom Hanks vs Mel Gibson, George Clooney vs Martin Sheen. Actor against actor, start against star. Good stuff.

To be fair, it’s not as though they are hurling rocks at one another. But there are divisions within the ranks of the SAG over whether to authorize a strike. In a petition yesterday, 130 actors — many A-listers — sought to have the union halt the strike authorization vote. The way they see it, the economy is so bad that a strike right now would be too devastating to the industry.

Perhaps they have a point. Hollywood, after all, is still recovering from the writers’ strike. TV ratings are way down, advertising dollars are drying up and consumers are keep a close watch on their budgets. It could be a terrible time for a strike (And we should note that a strike authorization vote is different than an actual strike).

On the other hand, if the SAG fails to pass the strike authorization vote then it will find itself in a very tough negotiating position. More than likely, it would have to accept the studios’ latest offer and hope that it can achieve better terms in the next round of negotiations.

What to do? Fortunately, we don’t have to decide. But let’s hear from you, just for fun.

Would you authorize or oppose a strike vote?

Keep an eye on:

• ESPN.com is counting on less clutter and more advertising options to bolster revenue at a time when its sister cable channels are battling rare weakness (NY Times)
• Employees of CBS Entertainment and CBS Paramount Network TV were let go Monday at the company’s Studio City and Television City lots in California (Adweek.com)
• Apple witnessed flat year-over-year overall sales in the United States for its Macs in November, while sales of rival Microsoft Windows PCs were up 7 percent (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

IAC Chief Executive Barry Diller took several groups to task at the Reuters Media Summit, but he reserved special disgust for CEOs at profitable companies who add to the country's rising unemployment rate.

Also targeted by the former Hollywood executive were "incredibly, shockingly stupid" Big 3 auto executives, the Internet's strange and growing dictionary, and Hollywood's lack of creativity.

Diller said companies had a higher obligation, especially in tough times like these:

"The idea of a company that's earning money, not losing money, that's not, let's say 'industrially endangered,' to have just cutbacks so they can earn another $12 million or $20 million or $40 million in a year where no one's counting is really a horrible act when you think about it on every level. First of all, it's certainly not necessary. It's doing it at the worst time. It's throwing people out to a larger, what is inevitably a larger unemployment heap for frankly no good reason."

A few seconds later, he added:

"It's not that you don't want to earn as much money as you can -- it is your obligation, of course -- but companies have obligations beyond that and they certainly have obligations beyond that at certain times, in the times in which they operate. And they also certainly ought to know that meeting and beating expectations is probably yesterday's game and it will be increasingly so, which would be by the way very healthy for companies. Running a company that meets and beats expectations, and that runs their company accordingly, are companies that I would question why anyone would invest in."

Diller was equally confounded by the top three U.S. auto executives, who recently were criticized for separately flying corporate jets to Washington before hearings to request a $25 billion taxpayer bailout.

"It's incredibly, shockingly stupid if you're going, when you think about it. On that count alone I wouldn't give them any money. And not because of any reason other than why would I give money to someone so dumb to go to Washington to ask for money and fly in a Gulfstream. You'd say, 'You're not qualified. Unless you leave, I'm not giving you money.'"

Other topics:

* When discussing social networking: "Think of the bimbo words this Internet has created: portal, social network; I could riff on .... networking, horrible word too."

* Hollywood: "Margins used to be very good in the movie business. They're now, what, 4, 5 percent in a decent year, so where's the joy in that? Is there really a joy in 'Superman 17' or "Iron Man 2'?"

* Movie studio executives: "'Mogul' is yesterday. It just doesn't apply. You use the word 'mogul' and what you do is conjure up the fantasy, the memory of when there were actual movie moguls who made their decisions, believed in what they did, were outsized personalities. There's no outsized personalities in the movie business anymore."

* Indiscriminate spending: "There is a reluctance, even with people who have vast resources. Right now, it just isn't the order; it isn't the day. You're not going to see a birthday party for three million bucks. I don't care how many billions you have or paying Mick Jagger $3 million to come and sing for your birthday. I notice this with my friend. I just notice this as a condition of this period."

To hear the always entertaining Diller riff, go ahead and click on the links...

(Photo: Reuters)

It’s layoff week at Gannett — even the second N and T might be redundant.

The largest U.S. newspaper publisher and owner of USA Today, the nation’s biggest-selling daily paper, is slashing payroll just in time for the holidays. We read about layoffs everywhere these days, but if you want to see the slow-motion car crash version of how Gannett is doing it, look to Gannett Blog, run by former company reporter Jim Hopkins.

With no newspaper job to keep him busy, Hopkins chronicles nearly every event that he hears about Gannett. That includes a dose of rumor, but much of what he reports is more right than wrong.

Here is one of his latest reports:

Gannett launched what is likely the biggest mass layoff in newspaper industry history yesterday, slashing 655 jobs by early this morning, in an increasingly desperate bid to return the troubled 102-year-old publisher to prosperity. The final tally could run into the thousands.

Many more layoffs are expected today and tomorrow across the 85-daily community newspaper division, plus USA Today and the Detroit Free Press. As of 1:25 a.m. ET, only 17 papers had been accounted for, based on published accounts and Gannett Blog reader reports.

(My Gannett newsroom sources are telling me the same story.)

And while we knew that Gannett was going to cut deeply, he is keeping score at more than 80 papers, thanks to a legion of newsroom sources that dwarfs that of nearly every other reporter who covers the business.

A sample from Wednesday morning, all from anonymous posters:

The Tennessean has started layoffs today (Tuesday), a day earlier than they had told us. So far in the newsroom today we’ve lost two managers and a copy editor.

Fort Myers in progress; so far two copy editors and a designer.

Pensacola News Journal has finished up. At least five has been laid off, including the business editor who was called in from her maternity leave. Classy.

See the layoff ticker, which Hopkins updates often. Also check the documents that he posted on his website that purport to show Gannett papers’ double-digit profit margins as the company wields the axe.

UPDATE: Even Scotland is not immune,

Gannett is hardly the only publisher hacking away at payroll. Conde Nast, Time Inc and the Associated Press all are up to the same thing. The Financial Times, which not long ago was touting how good the financial crisis was for the paper, is offering buyouts and shorter work weeks. It also is freezing salaries for folks who make more than $50,000 a year.

Keep an eye on:

Yahoo: How does former AOL boss Jonathan Miller fit into the picture? Rupert Murdoch’s New York papers offer completely different stories, allowing you to believe one while scoffing at the other. The Wall Street Journal says Miller is trying to raise as much as $30 billion to buy Yahoo. The New York Post says Miller is trying to raise money for Velocity Interactive Group, the investment fund that he runs with former Fox Interactive Media chief Ross Levinsohn. We’ll only briefly remark on how funny it is that an investment firm is trying to raise money from investors.

Google: The party is officially over, according to The Wall Street Journal. Side projects involving grand visions for absent-minded professors appear to be “out.” Making money appears to be “in.” (The Wall Street Journal)

MySpace: Rupert Murdoch’s online social network is letting members use their mobile phones and devices to watch videos posted to their MySpace homepages. That does NOT include the Apple iPhone — yet. (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)