—Palm Beach Newspapers: The Cox Enterprises-owned publisher of the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Beach Post and several other Florida papers plans to slash 300 jobs out of a total of 1,350 posts across its properties including about 130 newsroom jobs. The Post‘s limited coverage is here; More details from E&P.

—Detroit Media Partnership: The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, governed by a Joint Operating Agreement, announced voluntary buyouts in hopes of reducing staff by up to 7 percent, or 150 positions. Free Press Publisher Dave Hunke said the move was being made in light of bad business conditions. The program, which is open to those 45 and older with at least 10-years experience will offer two weeks of severance pay for every year worked. Buyouts have become a common prelude to layoffs, as publishers often haven’t found enough volunteers. More at the Free Press.

—Default Watch: Alan Mutter put together a chart showing the major publishers and their varying degrees of default likelihood, based on ratings from Moody’s. In worst shape is Journal Register (OTCBB: JRCO), which has a 72 percent chance of being in default. As he notes here, default can mean two different things. Either the company can be in violation of some financial convenent (e.g., not maintaining a proper leverage ratio), or it can be in the more severe hard default, which basically means bankruptcy. The highest rated “paper”: Washington Post, though mainly that’s because the company is really a solid education company (Kaplan) that also owns a struggling newspaper.