Houston Chronicle cuts 12 percent of staff
Hearst Corp’s Houston Chronicle is cutting 12 percent of its staff, the newspaper said on Wednesday, as publishers continue to suffer from the weak advertising environment.
The layoffs will include about 90 people in the newsroom, the paper said in its online edition. No one at Hearst could immediately be reached for comment.
The Chronicle is the ninth-largest U.S. newspaper by weekday circulation and the seventh-largest by Sunday circulation, according to the U.S. Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The job cuts — announced to employees on Tuesday by Chronicle Publisher Jack Sweeney — are part of an effort to reduce costs amid unprecedented change in the newspaper industry, the paper said.
Last week, Hearst eliminated the print edition of its ailing Seattle Post-Intelligencer, moving it online.
And Hearst has said it would close the San Francisco Chronicle unless it gets significant concessions from its unions, including the ability to cut staff paydayloan.
It secured concessions from one of its largest unions, and talks continue with the other, a Hearst spokesman said on Tuesday.
Faced with falling advertising spending and a worsening economy, newspaper publishers are struggling to rein in expenses and offload debt quickly enough to survive.
Earlier this week, the New York Times Co said it planned to sell the Times Daily newspaper of Florence, Alabama, to a regional publisher.
Newspaper publishers are also contending with declining circulation as their readers move to the Internet, where most news is free.
(Reporting by S. John Tilak in Bangalore and Robert MacMillan in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)