Add another item to the list of last ditch ‘it could be worse’ decisions made by newspapers. Yesterday the New York Daily News told its staffers that it would cease to contribute to its employees’ 401(k) plans. Said CEO Mark Kramer in a memo to staff: “”Unfortunately, this negative trend has continued into 2009. . . We do not know how long the current financial crisis, and the dramatic decline in advertising revenues, will continue. So we must do everything possible to ensure that we match our costs with our revenue.”

Says Keith Kelly in the Post today: “Needless to say, insiders are livid. The company has not had a pension plan since Zuckerman bought the paper from the estate of Robert Maxwell in the early 1990s. The 401(k) was the company’s only way for the billionaire real-estate magnate to help out his valued, long-term employees in their sunset years.”