"Our employees have done an outstanding job of producing good, quality community newspapers in St. Clair County for many years," said Joe Pepe, president of the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis. "However, the Journals have not been able to secure enough St. Clair market share of advertising revenue."

Pepe notified workers of the closings in a meeting at the Journals' office in Swansea.

Some of the St. Clair County employees will be absorbed by other Suburban Journals papers, Pepe said. Those who do not find positions within the organization will be given severance packages, he said.

In a letter to Chronicle employees released late Thursday, Sweeney outlined the changes, which include involuntary layoffs, open positions that will not be filled, and changes in the use of contract labor and use of outside services.

The restructuring will not affect the newsroom and advertising sales staff, Sweeney wrote.

Employees affected by the changes will be offered severance packages and outplacement services.

"We're diluting both our management and our resources by focusing on two brands," Elizabeth Hambrecht, Salon's chief executive officer, said Tuesday. "Finding another owner for The Well that will give it the resources it requires and deserves is the way we'd like to approach this. We're not looking for the first buyer out there--we're looking for a good match."

Neil Blair, a lawyer for the London-based Christopher Little Literary Agency, which represents Potter author J.K. Rowling, said Rowling?s latest book has been distributed online more widely and more quickly than previous editions, hitting sites within 24 hours or less after the July 16 release.

Illegal narrated audio versions of the book also were making the rounds online. And Web sites have posted translations of the e-book in various languages. Sellers have hawked the illegitimate e-book and audio books on eBay. Some were still on sale last week.

The creators of the illegitimate e-book scanned in the pages of the printed book using computer scanners, creating images, much like photographs, of every page, according to Wired News, an online magazine. They then used software to convert the images into text that can be edited in a word processor and shared the work of proofreading the final version, the magazine reported, based on conversations from online chat rooms.

The lawsuit was brought by furious fans who felt they were tricked into seeing the Heath Ledger film A Knights Tale, because of fake quotes from the nonexistent critic named "David Manning." Manning called Heath Ledger "this year's hottest new star."

Promotional material for other films including The Patriot, Vertical Limit and The Animal also carried quotes from "David Manning of The Ridgefield Press".

He supposedly called Heath Ledger "this year's hottest new star" for his role in A Knight's Tale, said The Animal was "another winner" and Hollow Man was "one hell of a scary ride".

But The Ridgefield Press, a small paper in Connecticut, said David Manning had never worked for them.

Sony temporarily suspended two employees following an internal investigation into "fabricated quotes on four movie ads".

The new chief executive of Chrysalis Books, Robin Wood, said yesterday he and his senior management had spent the last two months devising new publishing schedules and budgets "with the specific targets of reducing costs and delivering a more focused and profitable business".

Chrysalis said it would reveal the new structure, strategy and senior management team for its books division next month.

The miniscule number of women on these lists is as unrepresentative of women bloggers as the number of women CEOs in the Fortune 500 (eight) is to the number of women working (nearly 50 percent). Bottom-line: It's hard to find you. And if you care, then it looks like we'll have to fix that ourselves.