Last week, The Los Angeles Times announced that it would be laying off an unspecified number of employees — the rumor is 60 editorial staff and 120 employees all together. The Washington Post announced that 70 newsroom staff would be taking early retirements. In other journalism wipe-out news, Time Magazine recently laid off 650 employees. The Village Voice closed its Washington bureau and fired veteran reporter James Ridgeway. And here in Li’l Rhody, several of the local bureaus for the Projo have been consolidated into the home office in Providence. Though I’m not aware of any layoffs at the Projo, you have to wonder if it isn’t inevitable.

See a pattern here? Corporate media is struggling to make a profit, and the result is shrinking news capacity. This means — among other things — that journalists will be joining the ranks of the unemployed, or else trying for the ever-elusive blog stardom of the handful of bloggers who make enough money to survive.

It also means that average people have less information advocates doing the hard work of finding out what is happening in our world. That the Rhode Island Senate recently passed legislation to give the police full access to people’s phone and internet records without a warrant, and that this fact occurred without any media (that I saw) reporting on it beforehand, might be an indication that our journalists are spread too thin and that we do not have adequate watchdogs in the media alerting the public to what’s going on in the General Assembly.

So here’s to the blogs, and to the journalists still left at the big media outlets, who face daunting work and the demoralizing reminder that their job security is just a pink slip away.