Lots of senior leadership at the Tacoma News Tribune walked through the door. Mike Gilbert, a 21 year veteran and military reporter; Susan Gordon, 25 year veteran and environmental reporter; Casey Madison, the papers photo editor; Bill Hutchens (no idea what he does, but he's been around a long time); and photog Russ Carmack, who has been with the paper since the early 70.

The Olympian, for the most part, was spared the loss of senior people. Mary Tracy, a newsroom assistant; Kirk Ericson, a senior copy editor, blogger and 20 year veteran; Keri Bremmer, Thurston County and Health reporter; and Karen Crist, another copy editor are out the door.

Makes sense that senior people would take the buyouts, they're cheaper to replace and the packages were probably good enough to allow them to transition to retirement or some other career. Its probably good that even more senior folks didn't hit the door.

It will be interesting to see how the Olympian copes with the loss of two copy editors. You might see more mistakes and errors in the paper.

Also, anyone see the irony in letting go of the one person writing "health" news at the Olympian while the paper is "playing offense" with a new health website?

In the end, it might be that Ken Balsley is correct, the South Sound (south of Vashon) will be a one newspaper region:

News operations would be coordinated out of Tacoma, but McClatchy would keep a small contingent of writers and reporters in Olympia, to cover state government.  Most sports coverage will come out of Tacoma, as most of it does now.  More and more stories about the Mariners or the Seahawks carry a Tacoma byline.

The most depressing part about the story a week or so back about the most recent buyouts at the Olympian was the horn tooting by the paper's publiser about how they're fighting back the tide:

The paper is pushing its advertising and circulation departments to drive revenue and it recently launched Vitality411 — http://theolympian. vitality411.com — a new health care Web site, Miller said.

“We’re not just playing defense; we’re trying to play offense as much as possible,” he said.

Vitality411, to put it nicely, isn't a local product. It may have listings for local resources, but by and large, it is a canned copy product the Olympian bought from MediResources, a company from Toronto that describes itself here:

We are at the forefront of creating new technologies that deliver health content. We differentiate ourselves from others, as we don't just create health information or just develop technology, we do both. This has allowed us to have a unique perspective and create more technologically innovative ways to deliver information that effectively improves health.

The copy that the Olympian is buying from Canada isn't even exclusive to the Olympian. This column on dancing is also available here and here. Actually, now that I think of it, the Idaho Press-Tribune's health website looks exactly the same as the Olympian's, minus the masthead of course.