JAY SMITH, publisher of The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, began his career in journalism as a reporter for the Dayton, Ohio, Daily News in 1971. He spent twelve years at the Daily News, the last two as president, before moving on to the Austin American-Statesman and then, in 1986, to Atlanta. All three papers are owned by Cox Entrprises, Inc., a privately held company that reported rewvenues of more than $ 2 billion last year, up 6 percent from 1989, according to the company's annual report. That report described the Journal and Constitution as 'the fastest-growing major newspapers in the nation" in 1990. In January, the papers laid off 133 people, out of a total workforce of about 4,500. Smith, forty-one, is married and has three children.

A layoff fells awful. It's the absolute last step you take. You work hard to cut expenses, to find new sources of revenue. The last thing you want to do is tell someone that they no longer have a job.

We did literally hundreds -- if not thousands -- of things to cut costs and become more efficient. We left empty positions empty. We cut back on travel. We eliminated an annual company-wide picnic. We went through all of our buildings and managed to turn out about one-third of our lights as a way of conserving energy. We looked at all of the legal pads we were buying and asked, Can we make our own, using waste newsprint? And we did that. We tried everything.

Unfortunately, as we hit the start of this year, it became apparent to us that we didn't have too many more ways we could either build revenue or reduce expenses. The mood in the newsroom and around the rest of the buidling at the time was one of real hurt. People here have really worked hard and have poured their hearts and soul into the newspaper, and to see colleagues laid off, that hurt. But I think we came quickly to the recognition that the paper has got to be financially strong if it's going to be a strong newspaper and a newspaper that's worth anything to this community.

The layoffs were spread proportionately across the operation, including news, advertising, circulation, production. The department heads made recommendations about who would go and who would stay -- mostly on the basis of seniority. We agonized about this collectively. Something of this magnitude, you don't simply say, "Do it," and then walk away from it. Once the decisions were made, the people who were laid off were told by their immediate supervisors, all on one day. You try to get the bad news over with.

Twenty years ago we were fairly immune to this type of business pressure. We were a good bit more sheltered from the realities of life than perhaps we should have been. I think it's important to keep in mind that newspapers as a business are reflective of society. I don't know of anybody else that's leading a soft existence right now. I think we're experiencing something that virtually every other business is experiencing. It's a part of life, and you deal with it.

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