Wow — this turned into a Black Wednesday for Twin Cities dailies.

Hard on the heels of the Strib's $3.4 million monthly operating loss comes news that the PiPress wants its newsroom to take a $2.4 million hit — and that, folks, is a body blow.

To give you some perspective, the Strib's newsroom just agreed to a $1.7 million cut — and they have about twice the bodies of the PiPress' hardy 138-person band.

The Strib's Dan Browning, a former PiPress staffer, crunched some numbers and says St. Paul could lose up to 30 newsroom personnel — hard to imagine in a staff that's already skeletal. Would even Dean Singleton's e-edition subscribers pay for a PiPress with 20 percent fewer journalists?

However, Browning's calculation assumes surviving newsroom employees absorb no cuts. A memo from St. Paul's Newspaper Guild (below) indicates management would rather pay everyone less: slashing wages, ending 401(k) matches, eliminating extra pay for night workers, and axing merit pay.

The Strib's recent contract has all of those painful facets except for merit pay, which was cut by a third but not eliminated. Overall, though, we're witnessing a classic race to the bottom.

Here's the Guild's memo:

Guild leadership met Thursday with Editor Thom Fladung and Director of Labor Relations Marc Chrismer. The publisher is asking the Guild to take wage and benefit reductions totaling about $2.4 million for the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1.

The company wants to accomplish these savings through pay increase freezes, step freezes, 401K match freezers, elimination of night differential, elimination of merit pay and pay cuts.

Fladung indicated that, during company budget discussions, he was told the burden of cost cuts would rest on the newsroom.

Guild leadership asked what concessions would be requested of other unions and non-union employees. In addition, the Guild asked to examine the company’s books and to see other financial information.

As soon as Guild leadership receives the requested information, we will schedule a membership meeting to discuss the next step. We have made no decision about whether to consider the company’s suggestions. That decision will be made by the full membership.