L.A. Times To Cut 250 Jobs; 150 Are New

Continuing Industrywide Slump In Ad Sales Forces Newspaper Into Cuts, Says Editor

(AP)  The Los Angeles Times plans to cut 250 positions, including 150 jobs in the print and online news departments, amid a continuing industrywide slump in ad sales, the paper's editor said Wednesday.

The decline in advertising, fueled by a weak real estate market, has boosted the copy-to-ads ratio above the industry target of 50-50, giving readers more stories than they can digest, while the paper competes for attention with the Internet and TV, editor Russ Stanton said.

As a result, the paper will undergo a makeover by the fall that will cut pages by 15 percent per week, eliminate some sections and trim story length, Stanton said.

"The number one reason that people cancel the L.A. Times is, they tell us, they don't have enough time to read the paper that we give them every day," Stanton said. "We're going to be more picky about the stories we choose to write long and a lot more picky about the ones we write shorter."

The Web and print departments will be merged into one operation with a single budget, and the company will also refocus on being more versatile, he said.

"We're great about putting out a paper; we're getting a lot better at putting up a Web site," he said. "We're not very good on TV or radio, and we don't do mobile at all. We need to do all of those things going forward."

The move followed an announcement last week that the paper's parent, Tribune Co., is exploring the sale of its headquarters in Chicago and the building in downtown Los Angeles that houses the Times.

A half-dozen major newspapers announced layoffs last week totaling about 900 jobs.

Also Wednesday, Journal Sentinel Inc. said it would cut about 10 percent of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's 1,300 full-time employees, and Media General Inc. said it would lay off 21 newsroom employees at The Tampa Tribune by early fall as part of a one-fifth cut in its news staff.

Stanton declined to say which sections would be cut, but he said the A section, containing foreign, national and top local stories, will get larger.

Last month, the paper said it would also stop publishing its money-losing monthly magazine using editorial staff. A new magazine is planned to launch as early as August with other staff.

The most recent cuts were made assuming the economy would stabilize early next year and were designed to help the paper "get ahead of the change that's roiling the entire industry," said Times Publisher David Hiller.

The combined moves "should make a significant contribution toward offsetting the revenue declines."

"It won't fully offset them, but it'll help," Hiller said.

The Times' weekday circulation fell 5.1 percent from a year earlier to 773,884 in March, while the Sunday edition fell 6.1 percent to 1.1 million, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That ranked it fourth and second in the nation, respectively.

The editorial staff of 876 people will shrink by about 17 percent to more than 700 people by Labor Day. Jobs also will be eliminated in circulation, marketing and advertising, bringing total employment to about 3,000 at the Times, local weekly papers, the Spanish-language daily Hoy and latimes.com.

"These moves will be difficult and painful," Stanton said in a memo to staff. "But it is absolutely crucial that as we move through this process, we must maintain our ambition and our determination to produce the highest-quality journalism in print and online, every day."

Hiller did not provide details on the severance terms to be offered but said he expected they would be similar to earlier staff buyouts, including payment equivalent to two weeks' salary for every year of service, up to 52 weeks.

The paper cut 100 jobs, including at least 40 in the newsroom, in February. Continuing reductions have pared the Times' news staff from its 2001 level of nearly 1,200.

Tribune Co. said in May that its first-quarter advertising revenue declined 15 percent, contributing to an 11 percent drop in operating revenues from its publishing division, to $823 million from $926 million a year earlier.

That unit, which consists of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday and other newspapers, saw operating profit decline 74 percent to $37 million.

[wardoglrs]

JTait2: your a fool go look up her pathetic voting record you idiot. She and her wonderful husband is nothing short of a Neo Con *** along with Obama
and his wife that like Lizbos and *** and care less for America. Your pathetic POS

[wardoglrs]

Good I hope the news rooms go under too i cant wait to see this come true. You worthless punks deserve this and some.
Good ridence to the Neo Cons that have betrayed us all these years. I hoped that the American people would have woken up but they didn''t. This is why Dr Paul was trying to wake you up. But you all choose to ignore his warning.Shut down all the feds buildings. Bring home all the troops around the world stop all subsides to the lobbyist, Deregulate the laws
on Energy and Farms etc , Each Fed Building cost you the tax payer at least 40 billion a year. The war cost 500 million a day thanks to the Military industrial complex which the Jew''s own and run. Soon you all will be on the streets eating out of garbage cans just like the homeless do. Welcome to there dream and your nightmare. You children will go to war and die for there banks. You are nothing your just a worm to them ask any brown skin person who lives in Israel that suffer at the hands of these monsters you so like to protect. They have truly scammed you and brain washed you. Now look at this mess and you still beg for more from the very people that could care less. But hey its just another day in the jungle

[beehive21-2009]

Newspapers ? who reads one, everyone has a computer and reads all the papers and mags w/o having to sse all the ads.Land line telephones are next,we are in the 21 st century,you don''t see many horse in wagons, either.Fuel prices keep raising we may be riding horses in the future.

[avigil2]

Working at a newspaper myself, this is a sad reality. We''ve recently let go 200 staff members. Newspapers are going the way of the Dodo bird if we don''t change things up. Producing a newspaper is very expensive these days due to printing and paper costs, plus overhead, machinery, delivery vans, gas, etc. Perhaps in 5 to 10 years, I don''t think major newspapers will be in business (print-wise).

[underdogus01]

DEPRESSION A''coming watch out for people jumping off buildings...