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The Lexington Herald-Leader Co. is offering voluntary buyout packages to selected employees to reduce its work force in the face of declining revenue from advertising and circulation.
An estimated 4 percent of the newspaper's 385 full-time employees and managers are expected to be accepted by the company for the program, Publisher Timothy M. Kelly told employees Tuesday.
The actual total could be higher or lower than 15, depending on who applies.
Employees in certain jobs, including advertising salespeople, will be ineligible for the program. Kelly declined to say how many employees would be offered the buyout.
Written details were distributed Tuesday. Benefits include up to 26 weeks' pay and extended health insurance coverage.
Employees will have until May 23 to accept or reject the offer. The company will then have until May 30 to decide which employees will leave. Their final day would be June 6. The paper also offered buyouts in 2000.
"This is a very difficult decision, not reached easily," Kelly told employees.
But he said the Herald-Leader is not immune from the economic realities that are affecting media companies nationwide, including many that have offered similar staff-reduction programs.
The economic environment has been progressively weakening in recent years, he said. The Herald-Leader has not filled vacant positions, has eliminated five full-time positions at its Lexington packaging center, and has sent some advertising-design and -production work to India and the Philippines to hold down costs.
"We remain a profitable newspaper," Kelly said. "We are just not as profitable as in the past."
The Herald-Leader is owned by The McClatchy Co., the nation's third-largest publisher of newspapers.
McClatchy properties in California and Florida have been hit especially hard by the nation's real estate recession, and the company reported a loss of $849,000, or a penny per share, for the first three months of 2008.
Based on the first quarter of 2008, financial pressures show no signs of changing, Kelly said. "The trend is definitely not abating. If anything, it is getting worse."
The Herald-Leader's average paid daily circulation for the six months ended March 31 was down 1.4 percent to 109,603 copies, according to a recent report from the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Sunday circulation was down 2.7 percent to 135,250. Both declines were less severe than the national average losses of 3.5 percent in daily circulation and 4.5 percent in Sunday circulation for all newspapers reporting to the ABC.
When traditional newspaper readership is combined with use of the Herald-Leader's Web site, Kentucky.com, the total audience on March 31 was 556,278 households, up from 551,633 six months earlier.
