Jonestown.

Comparing layoffs to the worst mass suicide in modern history is a tad histrionic, for sure. But there's more to the metaphor - the element of betrayal. Like the Jones faithful, Gannett employees sacrificed for "the cause" and got burned. But instead of tainted Kool-Aid, they got severance pay determined by length of service and formerly friendly co-workers unwilling to meet their gaze.

Those are the stories - including the Jonestown reference - popping up on Gannett Blog, an underground website for current and former Gannettoids. It's underground in the subversive, not the "nobody knows about it" sense; on the contrary, founder Jim Hopkins is being name-checked all over the place - by the mainstream media as well as its tributaries.

Traffic on Gannett Blog skyrocketed last week, coinciding with mass layoffs by the newspaper giant - 10 percent of the company's workforce. Indulging in a little macabre merriment, Reuters Blogs joked that even Gannett's extra "n" and "t" might not be safe. The D&C was due to cut 59 positions - some through attrition. Steve Orr, president of the Newspaper Guild of Rochester, wrote in an e-mail that the D&C newsroom lost 14 jobs or 11 people - three went voluntarily, Orr said, and eight were laid off.

"Folks knew well that the cuts would take place this week, and the time leading up to this week was filled with tension and speculation," Orr said. "When the days arrived for the reductions, there was tension and trauma. Lots of teary eyes and muttering."

Longtime sports writer Scott Pitoniak is the highest-profile cut. Other confirmed names: assistant features editor Liz Forbes and Speaking Out editor Kathy Wagner. Wagner's departure jibes with Monday's announcement that the D&C is combining its Speaking Out and editorial pages, reducing its editorial section to a single page on Mondays through Fridays. The paper may have been testing the waters when it reduced its Monday editorial section to one page earlier this year.

Hopkins and others say that, in general, the cuts appear to have been orchestrated to spare "content creators" - reporters, editors, photographers, artists - as much as possible. Karen Magnuson, the D&C's editor and vice president of news, blogged essentially the same sentiment on Friday.

"Change is constant is the news business these days, but our commitment to serving this community will not waiver," she wrote.

But commitment doesn't replace bodies. Fewer people would seem to all-but-guarantee fewer stories or fewer quality stories as the surviving reporters and editors struggle to pick up the slack. And getting rid of "brand" names like Pitoniak damages a company's institutional memory - vital to providing readers with background and context - as well as shaking the community's faith in your product.

"It'd be foolish to say the news operation will get along nicely without the 11 people and 14 jobs that vanished this week," Orr said. "The rest will work harder and try to do as much good work as we can. Will readers notice a difference? Sure."

Jack Rosenberry, a communications-journalism professor at St. John Fisher, says that there's a direct connection between the health of newspapers and the health of the communities they cover. Finding solutions to community problems requires good, solid journalism that brings both positive and negative information to light, he says.

"If you think good journalism is good for a community, then scaled down or weakened journalism is going to be bad," he says.