Black and White and Read by Fewer

Here are some graphs pulled from an extensive article on the news biz by James Rainey, a Los Angeles Times staff writer. Click on the headline above to read the full story.

In a recent e-mail chat about the future of their business, several young New York Times reporters concluded with dismay that most of their friends don't subscribe to the newspaper.

At the San Jose Mercury News, hardened news hawks facing staff reductions have begun eyeing public relations jobs they once would have disdained.

Newspaper people across the country have descended into a collective funk over a run of bad news in recent weeks - culminating with announcements of newsroom job cuts in San Francisco, San Jose, New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

The total retrenchment at half a dozen papers will amount to only about 300 editorial jobs, a paltry hit in an industry with $59 billion in revenue that employs some 54,000 editors, reporters, photographers and others.

But the buyouts and layoffs have dispirited many newspeople because they come at a time of steady declines in circulation and advertising.

Knight-Ridder - the second-largest newspaper chain by circulation, with 31 dailies and a total circulation of 3.8 million - recently said its third-quarter profit would decline by 20%. The onetime Wall Street darling saw its stock reach a two-year low. It closed Friday at $56.60, down 23 cents.

Polk Laffoon, vice president for corporate relations at Knight-Ridder, said journalists hear such numbers but sometimes still fail to understand the urgency of the pressures confronting publishing executives.

"An industrywide circulation drop of 1.9% for the six months ended in March was one of the biggest in recent times and continued a fairly consistent two-decade decline. Daily newspaper circulation has fallen nearly 9 million from its 1984 peak of 63.3 million, while the U.S. population has grown by about 58 million. The country lost 306 daily papers, 17% of the total, between 1960 and last year.

The bad news at the New York Times came the same day that Knight-Ridder announced the cuts at the Inquirer and the elimination of 25 jobs at the Philadelphia Daily News, a sister publication.

Days later, Knight-Ridder said that 52 editorial positions at the San Jose Mercury News would also have to go. That would bring the paper's news staff to 280, a 30% reduction from its peak four years ago at the height of the tech boom.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, a recent buyout offer was designed to trim 120 jobs, including some outside the editorial staff. That's about a 14% reduction in the paper's white-collar workforce, according to union representatives.

The Chronicle's parent, privately held Hearst Corp., simply wants to get the paper back into the black. The Chronicle has been consistently losing money since Hearst agreed to buy it in 1999. Last year, losses totaled more than $60 million.