The hits keep coming at the Star Tribune. Editor Nancy Barnes said Monday that about 100 more staff positions would be cut, including 30 in the newsroom, where the headcount is about 290 at the moment.
The "cracking of our historical economic model and the current Great Recession have forced us to move quickly to make meaningful and difficult adjustments over the next few months," the company's operating committee said in a statement on the newspaper's Web site.
The state's largest newspaper has suffered a series of layoffs in the past few years, emerged from bankruptcy in September, and recently embarked on an effort to have readers pay to access premium content on its Web site.
In October, Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor and Minneapolis publisher Vance Opperman made a bid to acquire a minority -- but sizeable -- equity stake of 25 percent to 35 percent of the newspaper.
"Some of you may be asking yourselves when life around here is going to settle down," Barnes said in a newsoom memo obtained by David Brauer. "I don't think we as a business will ever be 'settled' the way we were in the 90s, but I strongly believe that we will succeed in reinventing our business and, in doing so, protect our core mission in which we all believe."
Along with the job cuts, which would be complete in the next few months, the Strib said it also plans a major Web site redesign to take place in 2010.
