Tribune’s Baltimore Sun Slashes About 60 Newsroom Positions

Tribune Co. is eliminating jobs in its Baltimore Sun newsroom as it seeks to cut debt.

Sixty-one employees have been told their jobs are being cut, Renee Mutchnik, a Baltimore Sun spokeswoman, said today by telephone.

Joe Kahraman, a Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild representative, put the figure at 58 and said the newspaper’s number may include non-union workers. The cuts, which will be completed by May 27, represent 27 percent of the newsroom, he said in a telephone interview.

Chicago-based Tribune, which filed for bankruptcy protection in December, has been slashing jobs and seeking to sell assets to help it reduce as much as $13 billion in debt. The Sun lost 9.6 percent of its weekday circulation in the six- month period through March, compared with 7.1 percent industrywide, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Bensinger in New York at gbensinger1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jennifer Sondag at jsondag@bloomberg.net