NEWSPAPER LAYOFF: Virginian-Pilot to cut 10 percent of work force

RICHMOND — The Virginian-Pilot will cut at least 125 positions, about 10 percent of its work force, mostly by laying off staff and closing or selling affiliated publications.

The Norfolk newspaper company will run its business section on Sundays only; shutter its 2-year-old free daily, Link; close or sell three out-of-state military-base newspapers; and trim the flagship paper’s size by at least 40 pages a week.

“I think I can confidently say it’s the worst week in the history of The Virginian-Pilot,” editor Denis Finley said Monday.

Finley said the newsroom will lose 15 employees, mostly editors and managers, in order to keep “as many reporters and content producers on the street as possible.” It also will drop two open positions.

That will leave the newsroom staff at 193, down 22 percent from 248 journalists in January 2007.

The cuts are expected by the end of the year.

Privately held Landmark Media Enterprises LLC, which owns the Virginian-Pilot and its subsidiaries, hopes to sell the newspaper, but newspaper officials said that didn’t influence the cost-cutting measures.

About 45 of the jobs to be lost are outside the Virginian-Pilot’s central coverage area, the Hampton Roads region of southeastern Virginia. The Pilot will sell or close three military base newspapers in Alabama, Georgia and Texas.

“We have a good staff and we will keep the quality of the journalism really high,” Finley said. “They’re still going to get a good report every day on the state of south Hampton Roads, there just will be a little less of it.”

Although the business section will be eliminated on weekdays and Saturdays, the newspaper is keeping a full business team, including an editor, who will produce stories for the front and Hampton Roads sections, Finley said.

The front section also will include a “market page” on Tuesdays through Saturdays that will include major indices, stocks of local interest and national and local business briefs. Stock listings will appear on The Pilot’s Web site. Those changes will begin on Jan. 12.

“One thing that’s a little troublesome is we’re in the worst economic crisis since the Depression and we’re getting rid of our business section,” Finley said. “However, the stories that really impact everyone in the community and are of national interest would probably appear on our front page anyway.”

Link, which was geared toward readers aged 18 to 34 and launched in October 2006, will close at the end of the year but may retain its Web site. Company officials have not decided whether to continue Port Folio Weekly, an alternative newspaper, or Mix, a multicultural monthly publication.

The newspaper is seeking new ways to generate revenue, like selling advertising space on the newspaper’s front page.

Newsstand prices are likely to rise — on top of a September increase of Sunday editions from $1.25 to $1.50.

The Pilot’s average circulation for weekdays is 174,573, down 3.4 percent from the previous year, according to an Audit Bureau of Circulations report for the six months that ended Sept. 30. The Sunday average was 200,457, down 4.3 percent.

The paper’s figures beat national average declines of 4.6 percent on weekdays and 4.8 percent on Sundays.

Newspapers nationwide continue to struggle as the economic downturn exacerbates the challenges they faced as advertising dollars moved online.

The nation’s largest newspaper, USA Today, owned by Gannett Co., said Sunday it will eliminate about 20 jobs in its newsroom next month to cut costs during the weak economy.

Finley said the mood in the newsroom is bad because workers don’t know if this will be the last of the cuts.

“Everybody is worried, everybody is I think depressed just over the state of the industry,” he said. “They don’t want to be working for a dying industry. They want to be working for a growing, robust industry.... The scariest part is that nobody really has it figured out yet.”