Hartford Courant cuts 100 more jobs amid ad slump

HARTFORD, Conn. -- The Hartford Courant, struggling with an industrywide decline in advertising, said Wednesday it will eliminate 100 jobs this week, primarily through layoffs.

The cuts will include about 30 newsroom employees, bringing the newsroom staff to 135, just more than half the number of people in the Courant's newsroom last year.

At least some employees were told by telephone calls to their homes Tuesday night. The newspaper announced the cuts Wednesday on its Web site.

Publisher Stephen D. Carver said layoffs also include some workers at a chain of alternative weeklies in Connecticut and the company's direct mail business, Valu Mail.

The Courant is owned by Chicago-based Tribune Co., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December as it seeks relief from $13 billion in debt, most of it from the company's takeover in 2007 by Chicago real estate mogul Sam Zell. Tribune also publishes the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and The (Baltimore) Sun.

Carver blamed the latest cuts on local business conditions, not the Tribune bankruptcy filing.

Scores of newspapers across the country have cut jobs, frozen wages or imposed unpaid furloughs in response to sharp declines in advertising revenue as the recession exacerbated troubles that began with the migration of readers and advertisers to the Internet.

In June, the Courant slashed 60 newsroom positions and 25 percent of its news pages. It rolled out a redesign in September that combined some sections and put a greater emphasis on local news. Carver said this week's layoffs won't affect the space the newspaper devotes to news.

"I wanted to get us into an environment where we could focus on our readers and advertisers going forward, and focus on growing the business," Carver said in a story posted on the newspaper's Web site. "We're going to perform at the level we've been performing."

Courant editor Cliff Teutsch did not immediately return a call seeking comment.