furlough [fur-loh] n. — a usually temporary layoff from work

Sometimes the business of journalism is just that, business.

At Game Guy HQ, managed by the Post-Dispatch and its parent company, Lee Enterprises, business is coming before pleasure for the game players around here. A company edict is directing the staff to take a few days unpaid leave between now and mid-April, and Game Guy’s turn is this week.

For fans of this site — all six of you — that means this blog must shutter temporarily to help this newspaper save a few dollars and stave off industry-wide collapse. For everyone else who reads Game Guy and just complains … well, this shutdown could not have come soon enough.

The situation deserves some explanation.

You see, newspapers long have lamented the loss of their readers over the past couple of decades all the while arguing among themselves over what to do in response. They have attempted to remake themselves, they have given away their content free online, and they have devised assorted cash and prize drawings — all to make sure you keep reading, or at least keep subscribing.

But these efforts, not to mention the publication of the newspaper itself, cost money. Lots of it. And when the economy stumbled last year, so did newspapers. In effect, the bottom dropped out of their bottom lines.

The fall was too far, too fast, forcing many news companies to trim resources and staffs in response. Another strategy has been to put employees on unpaid leave for brief periods, known as furloughs.

We’ve reached that point here at the Post-Dispatch. One by one, most of us will take time off amounting to one week per person. The goal is to reduce our company debt while preserving the jobs of so many talented and knowledgeable people who are trying to serve this great community.

Game Guy cannot begin to measure up to this group. Still, he has to go anyway.

In the meantime though, he will be reviewing games, checking up on all the latest developments in gaming and planning to return next week.