The recession is nominally over, but you wouldn't guess it from the news coming out of print media the past few weeks.

Another magazine, ReadyMade, shut down, putting 75 out of work, newspaper ad revenue hit a 28-year low, and now a major publisher is instituting yet more mass layoffs, citing lagging advertising as the reason.

Gannett confirmed yesterday that it is laying off 700 employees, representing roughly 2 percent of its workforce.

The reductions will come in the community publishing division, which includes such papers as the Indianapolis Star, Louisville Courier-Journal and Cincinnati Enquirer.

The pink slips were handed out yesterday, and Robert J. Dickey, president of the community publishing division, sent out a memo to employees explaining the reasoning behind the cuts, citing a dropoff in auto advertising and the weak real estate market.

"The economic recovery is not happening as quickly or favorably as we had hoped and continues to impact our U.S. community media organizations," said the memo. "With many of our local advertisers reducing their overall budgets, we need to take further steps to align our costs with the current revenue trends."

Gannett also said yesterday that it will implement yet another round of furloughs, though these will affect only people at certain salary levels.

Gannett has reduced its workforce by 17,000 since 2006, with four major rounds of layoffs under CEO Craig Dubow in the past three years.

And it's just one of dozens of newspaper companies that have slashed staff in the face of declining revenues.

For the overall newspaper industry, print revenue was off 9.5 percent in first quarter, to $4.75 billion, according to the Newspaper Association of America, the worst first-quarter revenue number in 28 years.

That was less than half what the medium took in during first quarter five years ago, just before the newspaper bust began.

Over the past decade, newspaper revenues have been chopped roughly in half, from some $50 billion in 2000 to $25 billion.

Those declines are expected to continue as more and more ad dollars shift away from print to online, which at the local level has been surging in recent years, accounting for an ever larger share of ad revenue.

While newspapers have attempted to counter the outflow by building up their web sites, they've also faced increasing competition from all manner of local media.