Business

Newhouse ax falls in Newark

The Newhouse-owned Newark Star-Ledger newspaper is giving pink slips to 34 employees — including nearly 10 percent of its editorial staff — as it continues to wrestle with a soft advertising market.

The daily, the largest in New Jersey, is losing more than $10 million a year, sources said.

Publisher Richard Vezza maintains the red ink is not that high, but declined yesterday to disclose a specific amount.

Vezza did not disclose how much he expected to save with the trims.

The newsroom cuts include eight full-time reporters and 10 part-timers out of a 195-person staff. It is the first time the paper has had to resort to involuntary layoffs to reduce staff.

The Newhouse family also swung the ax at other Northeast papers owned by its Advance Publications unit — trimming a total of 26 other jobs. Twelve staffers were cut at The Express Times in Easton, Pa. (10 full-timers and two part-timers), 11 lost their jobs at the South Jersey Times, and three staffers were axed at the weekly North Jersey Newspapers chain.

Vezza blamed the cutbacks on the worsening environment for newspapers and the aftereffects of Superstorm Sandy.

The involuntary cuts contradict a Newhouse family promise not to make such a move if the newsroom kept out a union.

Vezza said Newhouse has no plans to cut any of the Northeast dailies to three times a week, as the company did with its New Orleans Times-Picayune in September.

Newhouse cut the frequency of the Syracuse Post-Standard and the Patriot News in Harrisburg, Pa., to three days a week this month.