Amy Gahran, E-Media Tidbits editor at PoynterOnline has spotted a few old skool reporters who’ve taken to blogging in response to their recent axing by Gannett, the largest US newspaper publisher and owner of USA Today.

Jim Hopkins’ Gannett Blog is tracking layoffs in Gannett’s newspapers around the country, relying heavily on crowd-sourced numbers (mostly provided anonymously) from what Reuters describes as “a legion of newsroom sources that dwarfs that of nearly every other reporter who covers the business.“

Gahran says: “In my opinion, so much anonymous sourcing could undermine the appearance of credibility of these reported numbers. Still, this project still provides a powerful window on a difficult situation. (Hopkins’ blog offered similar crowdsourcing during Gannett layoffs in August and September.)“

She also points to Bruce Ritchie, erstwhile environmental correspondent for the Tallahassee Democrat, blogging his layoff and transition to independent journalist.

Meanwhile in the UK, Tim Holmes continues to blog cuts in local newspapers while paidContent UK is tracking the industry via its “special and depressing” layoffs tag.

Stats in today from @wmfischer at recruitment search engine Workhound paint a very dour picture for the ‘traditional’ media roles in the UK: comparing ads for newly posted jobs in November with the same 30 day period in 2007, real-time demand for blogging jobs is up (+9%), while journalist, editor and copy-editor jobs are all down (-55%, -48% and -65% respectively). Daryl Willcox reckons there are now 50 journalists for every editorial job.

TechMeme goes cyborg with human/AI mashup
Staying with media and on the subject of evolving news models, automated tech news aggregator TechMeme has taken a step forward — or back, depending on whose commentary you read. Founder Gabe Rivera announced yesterday that he’d hired Megan McCarthy last month to add her distinguished human judgement to the process.

Of the change, Rivera says: “The news will just get faster and more interesting. Obsolete stories will be eliminated sooner while breaking stories will be expedited. Related grouping will improve. Most of this will happen only on Techmeme, though other sites (like memeorandum and WeSmirch) will increasingly benefit from the direct human touch as well. ”

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch (which usually features prominently in TechMeme’s aggregator) thinks TechMeme’s lost its objectivity: “I believe this is a slippery slope for TechMeme. Certainly a human editor can make the results better. But it also completely destroys the objective nature of TechMeme and turns it into something different. It’s now subjective, and in many ways just another news site.”

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb is far more upbeat, seeing the move as validation of TechMeme’s sponsorship model and a step to redress the gender balance after years of criticism that the site is unfairly male-dominated.

Twitter slays PR?
The Guardian’s Charles Arthur highlights another development in the way Twitter’s changing the way people work, pointing to fulltime accountancy blogger Dennis Howlett’s rant that PR is so over: “It is time to draw a line in the sand. Accordingly, any PR that emails me gets this standard response: ‘I’ve stopped accepting email pitches. Please follow me on Twitter and pitch in 140 characters or less.’”

Some very interesting responses from journos and PRs in the comments, including tech hack Danny Bradbury’s considered advice for sorting the wheat from the chaff: “Better to try and manage the flow of information into channels like that rather than play Canute and stem the tide, in my book.”