Our local partners in journalism crime over at The Sacramento Bee received some bad news today. Two words: wage freeze.

This means that, over at the Bee and other McClatchy papers, no raises next year, and hopefully no furloughs. A memo from the CEO included zero discussion of how awesome the economic recovery is, or of layoffs (which probably means layoffs, or at least no replacement of departing employees, etc).

McClatchy CEO Pat Talamantes told employees in an email memo this morning that 

“After extensive review, we’ve settled on trying to break the furlough cycle and avoid budgeting them for 2014 by, instead, budgeting for an across-the board, one-year wage freeze beginning Dec. 30, 2013, the first day of the 2014 fiscal year.”

Talamantes didn’t promise the end of furloughs next year, just that they’re going to try really-super hard not to implement them.