The Sacramento Bee eliminated 12 positions Monday, but offered six of the affected employees new jobs. Two newsroom employees were laid off, but no writers or editors.

"I don't want to discount the fact that some people lost their jobs yesterday, but they were not involved in the gathering of news," said
Sacramento Bee Communifty Affairs Director Pam Dinsmore.

One of the two newsroom employees laid off worked as a photo technician and the other worked as a newsroom librarian, according to Dinsmore. She catogrized the move as a "reorganization."

The Bee and its parent company, The McClatchy Company, have gone through multiple rounds of layoffs in recent years, a symptom of the steady decline in print advertising revenue and the failure of online advertising revenue to fill the gap.

Recently, the Bee announced plans to implement a tiered online paywall system as part of a strategy to draw more revenue from its site.

The news was first reported by the Sacrament's Bee's chapter of the Northern California Media Workers Guild in a blog post by Ed Fletcher, a veteran reporter and guild member.

In a post entitled, "Layoffs are not minor if it’s your job," Fletcher said that, before Monday's announcement, he had hoped that the worst was over for the Bee and its employees.

"Like most newsroom and advertising employees, I hoped that the dark days were behind us," he wrote.

Editor's note: This article has been corrected to reflect the fact that six employees lost their jobs, not eight, as was originally reported.