A few thoughts on the layoffs here at the Gazette, announced in today’s paper:

It is no secret, ladies and gentlemen, that the newspaper industry in general and not just this newspaper in particular is on hard times. We are trying very hard to adjust to the new Internet world, and it’s not easy. Internet means free, and free doesn’t pay the bills.

Newspaper circulation across the country has been declining at a rate of about 3 percent a year for the past few years, and advertising, traditionally our main source of revenue, has been declining faster, must faster.

So we have to make cuts, and we wind up trying to do the same job we’ve always done but with fewer people. If it occasionally shows, please bear with us.

Not so many years ago when newspapers first started creating free Web sites I wondered how it would work. How can we give away our product through one door and still expect to sell it through another door? I never got a good answer to that question, and I still haven’t gotten one.

Advertisers were supposed to gravitate to the Web sites, and they have, but not enough to offset the losses in the print editions.

So here we are, trying to find our way.

I hear people say they don’t need newspapers, because they get their news from the Internet. But Internet sites do little to no reporting. They mooch off us, is all.

Now we are in the self-destructive position not only of feeding the beast that preys on us but of doing it free, also. At least in the old, pre-Internet days, radio talk-show hosts would have to lay down a dime for our product so they would have something to gab about.

I don’t know where this situation is going to end, but something is going to have to give somewhere. In the meantime, it is very sad to see old friends and colleagues cut loose.