Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times plans to cut 250 positions, including 150 jobs in the print and online news departments, amid a continuing industry-wide slump in ad sales, the paper's editor said. The decline in advertising, fueled by a weak real estate market, has boosted the copy-to-ads ratio above the industry target of 50-50, giving readers more stories than they can digest, while the paper competes for attention with the Internet and TV, the Editor said. As a result, the paper will undergo a makeover by the fall that will cut pages by 15 percent per week, eliminate some sections and trim story length, he said. The web and print departments will be merged into one operation with a single budget, and the company will also refocus on being more versatile, he said. The move followed an announcement that the paper's parent, Tribune Co., is exploring the sale of its headquarters in Chicago and the building in downtown Los Angeles that houses the Times.