The San Francisco Chronicle has announced it is laying off 25% of its newsroom staff by the end of the summer.
About 100 positions are being eliminated at the Hearst-owned newspaper.
Those affected allegedly include 80 reporters, photographers, and editors, as well as 20 employees in management positions.
Frank Vega, the Chronicle‘s publisher, said the paper will likely offer voluntary buyouts.
Vega said the layoffs are caused by decreased advertising revenue and the high cost of running the paper.
During a period when analysts admit that times are tough for print publication sales (“We’re here in the birthplace of Craigslist and in the cradle of Silicon Valley, where everyone is wired,” Goldman Sachs media analyst Peter Appert told the Chronicle), online recruitment alliances are getting hotter.
For example, on Monday Monster announced it has expanded its online and print recruitment service alliance by co-branding with 80 career and recruitment sites.
Collectively, Monster says the sites serve communities reached by 145 publications with a circulation of more than one million subscribers.
“The alliance with Monster will allow us to give recruitment advertisers and job seekers access to cutting-edge technology,” said Donna Barrett, president and CEO of Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.
“Employers already count on us to connect them with the most qualified employees in our communities, and Monster’s mastery of the online recruitment market will help us expand that relationship with our advertisers and readers,” she said in a statement.
The co-branded sites will be unveiled over the next several weeks, Monster says.
This announcement comes just two months after Monster announced its alliance with Adicio, another step in its localization strategy.
Monster started this localization strategy with its announcement, in August 2006, that it would co-brand with Philadelphia Media Holdings (parent company of the PhiladelphiaInquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com).
Since then, Monster has announced partnerships with the Akron Beacon Journal and the New York Times, among others. The alliance includes nearly 50 daily newspapers and eight television properties.
This service is certainly helping to add a new revenue stream for the newspapers, but is decimating the editorial department the way to keep readers hooked for the long haul?