Utah newspaper Deseret News cutting 85 newsroom positions

Deseret News cutting newsroom by nearly half

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s longest-publishing daily newspaper says it will cut nearly half of its staff and consolidate breaking news operations with affiliated television and radio operations.

The Deseret News announced the cutbacks Tuesday in a statement to The Associated Press. It said 85 newsroom positions are being eliminated, although some staffers will be enlisted for a transition period.

Deseret News CEO and President Clark Gilbert was announcing the changes in a staff meeting.

Gilbert said the newspaper is combining operations with KSL-TV and KSL Radio and will move to the broadcast networks’ building about five blocks away. He said the layoffs include 57 full-time and 28 part-time employees.

The newspaper will continue to publish seven days a week with contributions from readers, community figures and TV and radio reporters.

“We are in a period of massive innovation,” Gilbert said in the statement. “Audiences are migrating from traditional newspapers to digital news sources, which allows us to reach more audiences than ever before.”

Twitter postings from staffers inside the company meeting confirmed the details and said some of the paper’s top executives would be leaving.

“It’s going to be uncomfortable for people,” editor Joe Cannon said before ducking into the meeting.

The Deseret News began publishing in 1850, three years after Mormon pioneers settled the Salt Lake valley. The newspaper also publishes a weekly insert, the Church News, and recently began publishing a Spanish,language edition. It was not immediately clear how the changes would affect those publications.

The Deseret News has a weekday print circulation of about 72,000 and is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The city’s other daily, The Salt Lake Tribune, sells about 114,000 weekday copies.

Gilbert was hired in May as president and chief executive, a new position overseeing the publisher and editor. He remains president and CEO of Deseret Digital Media, a sister company organized under Deseret Management Corp., and set out to make the newspaper part of the church’s digital empire.

Deseret Digital Media oversees the website operations DeseretNews.com, KSL.com, DeseretBook.com, MormonTimes.com and LDSChurchNews.com.

The Deseret News website is unusually active for a news organization its size, with 17 million page views a month. Visitors tend to linger, and half of them are from outside Utah, affirming executives’ new strategy even as online advertising revenues remain marginal.