What good is freedom of the press when you have no press?

Below, one day's worth of headlines (Friday January 30th) from an e-mail sent to me five times a week by MediaBistro.com, a journalism and communications website.

For full details and a lot of pain, go here and click on any story:

Disney Finally Makes Its Cuts: 200 Fired at ABC, 200 at ESPN (AllThingsDigital)
ABC is firing 200 people and leaving another 200 positions vacant, which amounts to an overall workforce reduction of five percent. Meanwhile cable powerhouse ESPN is cutting 200 jobs of its own. There's little detail about who was cut where. TVNewser: ABC News is cutting 35-40 staffers as part of the larger cuts at Disney-ABC Television.

LAT Kills Local News Section (LA Observed)
LA Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein has ordered the California section killed. The publisher decided to fold local news inside the front section -- which will be reconfigured to downplay national and foreign news -- despite the unanimous and vocal objections of senior editors.

Page Six Magazine Goes Quarterly (FishbowlNY)
The entire staff of Page Six Magazine will be packing up their desks on the heels of yesterday's announcement that the weekly New York Post insert would move to a quarterly publication schedule. The only full-time employee left will be editor-in-chief Margi Conklin.

Cuts Coming Next Week at WSJ (Portfolio)
When Gerard Baker starts his new job as The Wall Street Journal's new deputy EIC next Wednesday, he'll have a lot of names to learn. But not quite as many as if he'd started sooner. Multiple sources say the newsroom is due to undergo another round of personnel cuts late next week.

Baltimore Examiner Can't Find Buyer, Will Close (Baltimore Sun)
Less than three years after its debut, the Baltimore Examiner free newspaper will cease publication next month. The decision comes after months of unsuccessful attempts to find a buyer for the paper and failed efforts to package ads with a sister publication in Washington.

Slate Editor Sends Staffers on Sabbaticals (NYO)
In a season of media cutbacks, thus far the staffers at Slate have escaped the scythe. Editor David Plotz has made no layoffs. Even more remarkably, Plotz is sending his writers out of the office to go work from home and pull together a big project and all the while still get paid for it.

Metro Shuts Spanish Edition (Guardian)
Freesheet group Metro International has closed its operations in Spain, in a sign of the chill wind blowing through the global newspaper industry. Metro said it would no longer publish in seven Spanish cities in the face of "unsustainable" losses.

And also at the MediaBistro web site last Friday:

Analyst Downgrades News Corp Pali Research analyst Rich Greenfield downgraded News Corp to sell from buy. His reasons include decreased earnings per share estimates; the possibility that COO Peter Chernin may not renew his contract; and a suspicion that Rupert Murdoch is without a strategy for the company's core businesses.

Recession Rocks Hollywood's Showbiz Papers (Reuters)
For more than 75 years, Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have battled to be the movie industry's top newspaper, but recent layoffs due to the recession and competition from Internet blogs has Hollywood wondering if it will soon become a one paper town.

Hell Week for Print Media (The Wrap)
Slate's Jack Shafer tries to view the death of newspapers with optimism: "I love newspapers, and at the same time, their dying makes me a mortician -- it gives me a lot of work," he said. "I still think the newspaper has a long way to go before it's taken the dirt nap."

LA Shakeup at People (P6)
Tongues were wagging this week when People's top editor, Larry Hackett, sent Manhattan-based assistant managing editor J.D. Heyman to run the LA bureau, a job formerly held by LA bureau chief Liz Leonard. "It's kind of embarrassing for Liz," said one source.

Note to the last reporter out the door: Don't bother turning out the lights. Just burn the building down before they turn it into more loft residences for Wall Street bankers. I hear lots of them are looking for digs to invest in with their government-sponsored bailout bonuses.