Approximately two-dozen mid-level employees in the consumer marketing department, to be finalized by the end of the day, according to a source with knowledge of the company's plans. The move is another part of Time Inc.'s slowburning reorganization, according to the source.

Consumer marketing appears to be the only Time Inc. division affected. No other layoffs are expected before the new year.

Ten editorial employees at The Hollywood Reporter lost their jobs Thursday as part of a reorganization at the publication, a spokeswoman for the trade paper said.

Among those cut were editorial director Howard Burns, who was promoted in March to his job overseeing the print and online versions of the publication, said spokeswoman Lori Rosen.

Also let go was Matthew King, vice president of content and audiences, and executive editor Peter Pryor.

Publisher John Kilcullen said in a statement that the cuts were part of a "significant transformation" at the paper in response to "market demands."

The reduction may be as much as 10 percent of the company's worldwide workforce of roughly 12,000 people, sources told Folio: Alert Friday. The cuts are apparently concentrated on the information side of the business.

But the U.S. magazine unit, with 140 printed publications including Billboard, Adweek, The Hollywood Reporter, Commercial Property News and National Jeweler, has been affected as well, sources said.

It was unclear how many people lost their jobs in a round of layoffs that apparently occurred Thursday, but numbers ranged from 30 people to 120 people.

Multiple sources inside the company said there was no official memo and that information was sketchy. "The HR people were all over the floors as it was going down," one source said.

The magazine is published by Urban Publishers Inc. of Houston which has produced separate editions in Houston, Dallas, San Francisco and Atlanta. The Atlanta edition is also closing down, said Jim Kastleman, the publisher.

"Our core markets of Houston and Dallas are booming, but San Francisco and Atlanta have not been growing fast enough to make them financially viable,'' Kastleman said.

"San Francisco is an amazing city. We simply did not grow fast enough and need to focus on our core market,'' he added. The San Francisco edition was launched in September 2002. It was delivered to high-income residences homes and as well as boutiques, salons, restaurants and other upscale venues.

The Catholic New Times (CNT), a news and opinion paper that has operated out of Toronto for three decades, is closing its doors after the next issue, due to insufficient funding. The New Times has been presenting an extreme left viewpoint for the length of its publishing run and has been banned in some Catholic diocese for some of its editorial positions opposing the Catholic teaching on sexual morality.

CNT has been the main organ of dissent in the Canadian Catholic establishment, notably on abortion, contraception and a female priesthood, since its inception. More recently the paper has endorsed homosexuality, saying in a February 2005 editorial, "...Same-sex, loving and committed relationships and the sexual expression thereof can be holy and may even be sacramental."

The same month, it was discovered that in one mid-size Ontario diocese, the Catholic New Times was a regular feature in at least 70% of parishes. One pastor in the St. Catherine's diocese, Fr. Paul MacDonald, described CNT as "programmatically dissenting."

"Its purpose is to undermine and cast aspersions on Catholic doctrines," said Fr. MacDonald. The paper was founded twenty-nine years ago by two of Canada's best-known dissenters from Catholic moral teaching, Sister Mary Jo Leddy and Fr. Gregory Baum.

Ted Schmidt, CNT contributor and editor, predicts that its next incarnation will be "interactive," and probably Internet based. It will reflect another shift -- besides the technological one -- for the next generation of Catholics, says Schmidt, "who increasingly understand that the principal sacrament of the church is baptism -- not holy orders."

Will a new CNT rise from the ashes? With the waxing and waning of Catholic New Times having so closely paralleled the fortunes of the church itself, the answer to that question may well be a harbinger of even more momentous things to come.

Since our growing DC readership is so Web savvy (42 to 47% of our demographic uses the Internet as their primary source of news and information) and since we are the only regional lifestyle resource offering what we do online (actually we are the only ones doing anything interactive on a regional Web site in our markets), we decided to pull away from the saturated print arena and concentrate our energies online to serve our readers' lifestyles on a daily basis.

Reuters has launched a new round of cost cutting, this time with travel and expenses in the spotlight.

The chief executive, Tom Glocer, has imposed 30% cuts to travel and entertainment budgets on the global news organisation's 15,300 staff.

The news was delivered to staff in an intranet posting in which Mr Glocer said that "tough measures" were needed to achieve "greatness". He also said that the amount of travel by Reuters staff denied opportunities to local journalists in foreign countries.

Fashion18 and The Look, both quarterly fashion magazines published in Toronto, will cease publication after their next issue.

Privately owned magazine publisher St. Joseph Media announced suspension of the two publications on Tuesday.

The Look, a magazine about fashion, style and the arts, is distributed through the Globe and Mail, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen and Vancouver Sun.

TV Guide magazine in Canada will cease its print edition on November 20 and move to the Internet on November 28. TV Guide Canada is owned by Transcontinental—which also owns Transcontinental Printing., while Gemstar-TV Guide International owns the U.S. version. There are no reports of the U.S. magazine ceasing print publication.

Overall, average daily circulation for 770 newspapers was 2.8 percent lower in the six-month period ending Sept. 30 than in the comparable period last year, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported. Circulation for 619 Sunday papers fell by 3.4 percent.

But some papers fared much worse. The Los Angeles Times lost 8 percent of its daily circulation, and 6 percent on Sunday. The Boston Globe, owned by The New York Times Company, lost 6.7 percent of its daily circulation and almost 10 percent on Sunday.

The New York Times, one of the few major papers whose circulation held steady over the last few reporting periods, did not emerge unscathed this time: its daily and Sunday circulation each fell 3.5 percent. The Washington Post suffered similar declines.

The Wall Street Journal's new Weekend Edition, just over a year old, lost 6.7 of its circulation from a year ago.

Future US, publisher of gaming, music, computing and sports titles like PC Gamer and Revolver, has shuttered four titles, three of which were part of the group of women's lifestyle magazines the company acquired in June 2005.

A spokesman said the publisher folded the titles to invest in its core products, which are aimed at young men. "Our mission is to be a premier provider of content in multiple media areas for young men. Thus, games, technology, music and action sports remain our key areas of focus and investment in print and on line as well as through our expanding event efforts and custom publishing. Within this refocusing we have had to make a very difficult decision about a few of our titles," the spokesman said. "With investment funds at a premium and some of our core projects needing investment too, we have been left with no choice but to choose where to focus our efforts and resources."

The second, he said, is "radio's unwillingness to target listeners in the 12- to 24-year-old demographic. The overwhelming majority of stations target the 25- to 54-year-old group, what is known in the industry as the 'money demo.'"

Listening hours have dropped almost 21 percent for 18- to 24-year-olds in the last 10 years, but they still listen for 18 hours in an average week, almost six hours more than their younger siblings. Weekly radio-listening hours have dropped 19 percent in the 12-to-17 demographic.

The Tribune Co. forced out Los Angeles Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson this morning, a little more than a month after he defied the media conglomerate's demands for staff cuts that he suggested could damage the newspaper.

Tribune Publishing President Scott C. Smith huddled with top managers at the newspaper this morning and announced that David Hiller, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, would immediately replace Johnson as chief executive at the 125-year-old newspaper. Hiller is the 12th publisher of The Times.

The Times ran a story Sept. 14 that quoted Editor Dean Baquet as saying he would resist calls from Tribune Tower for staff cuts because they would affect quality. Johnson backed Baquet, telling the Times that "newspapers can't cut their way into the future."

This immediately put Johnson at odds with his boss, Tribune Publishing President Scott Smith, and made him a cause celebre in U.S. newsrooms.

"Because it had become public, I made the call to weigh in," Johnson said. "I certainly wasn't trying to make a big public story of it. But I think it's important that publishers stand up to the job at hand.

"I'm not uncomfortable about the debate. It's an important issue and I think as a company we have to ... have a lot of open discussion about how do we get into the future and what's the best way to do it."

"Despite industry woes, The Times - the nation's fourth-largest newspaper by circulation - boasts a profit margin of 20% and is expected to produce pretax profit of a quarter-billion dollars this year."

Harlequin Enterprises Ltd., the romance-novel subsidiary of Torstar Corp. (TSX:TS.B), is cutting four per cent of its global workforce as part of a restructuring aimed at saving $3 million a year.

The women's fiction division - which generates about one-third of Torstar's revenue and generates almost all of its earnings outside Canada - has seen its profits squeezed by the stronger loonie and sharper competition.

Torstar said Tuesday it would book a restructuring charge of about $2.5 million, but did not specify how many people would be laid off or how many would be in Canada.

According to the company's latest annual information form, Harlequin employed 1,100 people last year. Based on that estimate, the layoffs would likely affect 44 people. Torstar chief financial officer David Holland did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Citing a shortfall of more than $20 million in advertising revenue, the Orange County Register said Friday that it would offer voluntary buyouts to employees to help reduce its workforce.

If enough people do not accept buyouts, layoffs will be likely, said N. Christian Anderson III, publisher and chief executive of the Santa Ana-based newspaper. He declined to specify the target savings and denied staff members' reports of $5 million to $8 million.

"Along with almost every other metropolitan newspaper, the Orange County Register has suffered declines in advertising in recent months," Anderson said in a statement. "Unfortunately, we don't see a quick turnaround in the loss of this advertising in key categories."

NUJ broadcasting representative Paul McLaughlin said: "This is a hammer blow for journalists at the BBC. This is frontline journalists that are going to be cut, people who the public identify with.

"The pretence these cuts can be made without damaging output is wafer thin. This will affect it very seriously."

Bectu members within the corporation's news division are already due to be balloted on industrial action next week over a separate dispute involving rota changes.

"We may get compulsory redundancies this time," said Bectu official Luke Crawley.

"I think it will be very, very difficult to get through this latest tranche [of job cuts] without compulsory cuts. If we have members who are facing compulsory redundancies we will be prepared to take action to defend them."

With the Internet taking readers and advertisers away from print in dramatic fashion this year, the overall number of magazine launches is expected to plunge 17% in 2006, according to Samir Husni, a University of Mississippi journalism professor who tracks the industry. That would be the first decrease since the black days of 2001, Mr. Husni says.

In addition, the percentage of magazines launched by major publishers--as opposed to entrepreneurs--will fall to 3% of the total, versus as high as 8% in recent years, Mr. Husni estimates.

"The whole publishing model has changed," he says, noting that Conde Nast has had Portfolio in the works for more than a year. "I really doubt [Conde Nast] would have planned something this big in the current marketplace."

The future has looked dark for the magazine industry before, but possibly not this dark. In recent months, major publishers have shuttered titles as varied as Hearst's Shop, Etc., Time Inc.'s Teen People, Hachette's For Me and Conde Nast's Cargo. In an effort to hunker down and focus on core properties--and their Internet extensions--Time Inc. earlier this month put 18 titles up for sale, including mass-market brands Popular Science and Parenting.

Belo Corp. on Thursday said it bought out 111 employees from the Dallas Morning News under a previously announced voluntary severance program that will cost it about $6.7 million.

The media company said it would record $5 million of the severance costs in the third-quarter.

Belo said the program, part of a reorganization plan at the newspaper, will save it about $9.9 million annually.

The company has eliminated more than 200 jobs in 2006, of which 30 have been relocated to Internet-centric jobs, it said in the statement.

Hearst Corp. said Friday it will stop publishing SHOP Etc. and Weekend because the two titles failed to meet the performance metrics the company set for them, according to Reuters. Hearst did not respond to a request for comment.

Hearst said SHOP Etc. will cease after its October issue and Weekend after its September issue. The company cited challenging economic conditions, a tough newsstand environment and rising paper and postal costs as attributing to the magazines poor performance.

After 33 years on the news stands, publisher Pacific Magazines confirmed this afternoon that the November issue - a bumper Christmas edition - of the monthly will be the last.

"This has been a particularly challenging decision given Family Circle's rich and deep history in Australia," PacMags chief executive Nick Chan said in a statement.

"Family Circle pioneered the sale of magazines in supermarkets. It has been part of many people's lives for more than three decades.

"However, times have changed, and despite Family Circle's trust and heritage as a brand in Australia, it has become increasingly difficult to sustain a viable business for the magazine."