A handful of Gannett
online properties

Gannett, which in October announced plans to cut 10% of its workers, is forcing employees to take a week's leave of absence without pay in order to avoid more job cuts, reports MediaBuyerPlanner.

News of the planned layoffs came a month after Gannett purchased an additional 10% stake in CareerBuilder.com for $12 million — increasing its holdings in the job search site to 50.8%.

The company didn't reveal how many workers would be required to take time off, or how even much money it would save, but it did say it planned to require unpaid leave for most of its 31,000 employees in the US. The Seattle Times asked the same of its 500 non-union staffers last month.

The newspaper industry is in dire straits. The economic downturn compounded a down advertising market, and readers continue to migrate to the web. Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy, the New York Times Co. is mortgaged its headquarters, the Christian Science Monitor is shifting its daily printed format to a continuously-updated website, Detroit's daily papers ceased home delivery four days of the week, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News may both close if buyers aren’t found in short order.

Gannett, publisher of USA Today, cut 3,500 jobs in 2007 and a similar number last year, according to the Wall Street Journal.