Funny thing, the daily newspapers routinely run headlines whenever a local business cuts back and is forced to lay off employees. Except they don’t seem to be keeping up with the news on one company laying off employees: Tucson Newspapers itself.

Last month about 30 employees at the Tucson Citizen and Tucson Newspapers were let go. Then, like a swinging sword of Damocles, the axe fell again last week. This time about 100 middle-management department heads were let go company-wide by the Citizen’s parent, the Gannett Co.

But Gannett isn’t talking publicly about the cuts. Instead, they’re giving the public appearance of being in a panic mode, trying to cut people faster than advertising revenues are falling.

"The decline in revenue has outweighed expense reductions almost threefold," Robert J. Dickey, president of Gannett’s newspapers division, wrote in a letter to employees.

It appears last week’s cuts took out the vice president of information technology in Tucson. And, although nobody is saying it, the odds of replacing Michael Chihak, who retired in July as publisher of the Citizen, are growing longer.

The August cuts appear to have taken out three employees in the Citizen’s newsroom, a special projects person, a copy editor and a job in the online area. Most of the rest who were let go were in circulation, marketing and the pressroom at Tucson Newspapers, the joint agency responsible for the business and production side of the Citizen and the Lee Enterprises-owned morning Arizona Daily Star.

KOLD News is No. 1

KOLD’s News 13 is solidly back on top of the latest local ratings taken July 3 - 30 by Nielsen Media Research. The CBS affiliate was No. 1 with target news viewers ages 25-54 in every time period it goes head-to-head with NBC-affiliate KVOA 4 and ABC-affiliate KGUN 9.

Not only that, but something that doesn’t happen in every market, the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric is the top-rated evening network newscast in the Tucson market.

Among local newscasts, KVOA fell from first to second place in the early morning and at 6 p.m., maintained second-place at 5 p.m. and fell from second to third at 10 p.m. A year ago, KVOA was No. 1 at 10 p.m.

KGUN dropped from second to third in the early morning, maintained third-place at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. and moved up from third to second place at 10 p.m.

The musical chairs of anchors on KMSB Fox 11’s News at Nine didn’t seem to have any ill effects on the ratings. KMSB’s ratings were up almost 39 percent from what they were a year ago and up almost 9 percent from the previous ratings in May.

Everyone up for an Emmy

There are no less than 40 nominations from Southern Arizona this year for Rocky Mountain Emmy Awards. It helps that there are now 91 categories thanks to several additions under the heading of new media.

The City of Tucson’s cable channel Tucson 12 has 12 nominations, KOLD 13 has 11, KUAT-TV 6 has nine, KVOA 4 has four, www.UANews.org has two and Wolf Creek Productions in Tucson, and Western lore’s Baxter Black in Benson, each have one.

Up for some of the more notable awards are KOLD’s Chuck George for best weathercaster; KOLD’s Damien Alameda for best sportscaster; KVOA and producer Hillary Nix for best newscast; KVOA’s Kristi Tedesco, Jennifer Kastner and Kean Bauman for investigative report; former KVOA reporter Amber Lyon for best live report; KUAT-TV’s Tom Kleespie for best historical documentary "Tucson Remembers: The Battle for Europe;" and KUAT-TV’s Kleespie, Martin Rubio and Steve Bayless for best topical documentary "Phoenix Mars Mission: Ashes to Ice."

The 31st annual awards ceremony will be Oct. 4 in Glendale. The Rocky Mountain Emmys are put on by the Southwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which covers Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, including the Yuma-El Centro TV market.

Capitol Times in Tucson

Arizona Capitol Times, the state’s political weekly newspaper, has expanded distribution into Tucson with a dozen vendor boxes downtown and at the University of Arizona. It will also be sold in some Safeway stores and in Borders book stores.

Tucson stays market No. 68

The Tucson television market grew another 2 percent to 456,030 households in the last year, according to Nielsen Media Research. The market held on to its No. 68 ranking among Nielsen’s 210 markets, which range from No. 1 New York, with over 7.4 million homes, to No. 210 Glendive, Mont., with 3,940 homes.

The Phoenix market, which kept its No. 12 ranking, grew almost 3 percent to 1.85 million households.

Contact David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237. Inside Tucson Media appears weekly.