Layoffs at Strib, Duluth paper: Citing “challenging economic conditions and the need to reduce costs throughout the organization,” management at the Star Tribune on Friday announced the elimination of 26 positions at the paper’s Heritage printing plant. Kevin Desmond, the Star Tribune’s senior vice president of operations, sent a memo to staff stating that workers — 19  press operators and seven others –  will be out of jobs Oct. 1. The move follows a Sept. 10 vote against concessions by the Teamsters pressmen’s local. Meanwhile, the Forum Communications–owned Duluth News Tribune is seeing similar pressures: it laid off eight employees last Friday and cut this week’s Home & Garden and Taste sections.

Washington Post launches link-rich politics site: Today the Washington Post launched a new site, Political Browser, which is noteworthy for something that’s rather unremarkable to many in the blogosphere: linking to a variety of external sources, even competitors. The move follows a report last week by Publishing 2.0 that addresses the “walled garden” attitude about outbound links at mainstream news site: it looks back at Nielsen ratings for the top 30 websites, both by user sessions and duration of use, and finds that a recent top placeholder was a site that deals only in outgoing links — the Drudge Report.