Bay Area newspaper chain to offer buyouts; 'significant' cuts expected

SAN FRANCISCO -- In another blow to workers in the financially troubled newspaper industry, the publisher of three of the San Francisco Bay Area's largest daily newspapers is offering employees buyouts and bracing for layoffs.

The Bay Area News Group, which is operated by Denver-based MediaNews Group, publishes the San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, Conta Costa Times and numerous other daily and weekly newspapers in the region, including the Lake County Record-Bee and the Ukiah Daily Journal.

The Mercury News is offering nearly 200 nonunion, or exempt, employees buyouts but will also need to lay off an unspecified number of union employees, its publisher and editor told the staff in a newsroom meeting on Tuesday. Even with buyouts, the newspaper will need to lay off an unspecified number of union employees, the publisher said.

"The next 18 months are going to be kind of rocky," said Mac Tully, who became publisher of the Mercury News less than two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, the Bay Area News Group-East Bay, which includes the Contra Costa Times and the Tribune, today offered all its employees the chance to apply for buyouts. The 1,100 employees will have about two weeks to decide if they wish to apply for a buyout.

If an insufficient number apply for the buyout, layoffs would follow, probably sometime in March.

Executives would not specify a target number of staff reductions but the president and publisher of the East Bay division, John Armstrong, told workers in a memo that "the number of jobs that will be eliminated will be significant."

The Mercury News, which laid off 31 employees in July 2007, around the same time that it accepted 15 resignations, blamed plunging advertising revenues and tough economic times in Silicon Valley and throughout the state and nation, for the cuts.

"The fact that the country is in a recession, particularly the coasts, has really hurt" said Tully.

John Armstrong, the president and publisher of Bay Area News Group-East Bay, which includes 16 newspapers, blamed "very tough times of historic proportion" for across the board cuts in those newspapers.

AP-WS-02-19-08 2038EST