Three more members of the ever-smaller Press-Telegram newsgathering team were among a dozen employees laid off Thursday, the latest cost-cutting move by MediaNews Corp., the paper’s Denver-based owner.

Out the newsroom door are photographer Scott Smeltzer, reporter Brenda Duran and website operator Joe Dickson. Among the others turned loose are Fred Murdoch, a fixture in the newspaper’s mail room for decades.

Operations at Long Beach’s diminishing daily are now so small that that the entire outfit now needs only one floor of the Arco Tower-down from the five-floor landmark building it occupied on the corner of Sixth and Pine for decades and the three floors of the Arco Tower it needed only two years ago.

Nonetheless, at a staff meeting convened at 4 p.m., Executive Editor Rich Archbold acknowledged that more cuts would be coming and that the paper would be going on a day-to-day basis. At one point, Archbold darkly joked that the paper may eventually be reduced to himself, a photographer and a reporter.

MediaNews Corp., which owns many newspapers throughout California, severely leveraged itself to forge this chain of First Amendment businesses. Huge payments on those loans are due this year, which likely would have prompted cutbacks in any case, but the downward spiral of the economy is now exacerbating the situation. Journalists and readers-which is to say, the First Amendment–are now paying the price.

Tags: Brenda Duran, dean singleton, Joe Dickson, leveraged, Media News, press telegram, Rich Archbold, Scott Smeltzer, staff cuts