Of the 70 layoffs, only five were editorial, though they included some veteran reporters like 21-year movie critic Bob Ross. Most were back office jobs like classified advertising telephone sales, circulation, and customer service that the Tribune will outsource.

Some other cost-cutting measures:
-Reducing page width by four percent to save on newsprint.
-Ceasing distribution in three counties outside of the paper’s core market to save on circulation and newsprint.
-Combining two special Friday sections into one, also saving on newsprint costs.

These are all things major newspapers have done before, but the Tribune’s strategies come with a plan:
-Dropping geographically zoned sections for various suburbs. This content will move to pre-existing community newspapers, following the trend of hyperlocal reporting. This will also allow advertisers to connect with specific reader groups.
- Moving staff from the “zoned” sections to the web as online producers. The Tribune and WFLA-TV share TBO.com, and its staff will now increase from 14 to 40.
- Launching at least 15 hyper-local, interactive community websites on TBO.com (much like Chicago’s NeighborhoodCircle.com)

All this did not come free: the Tribune has invested $16 million in online improvements in recent years to facilitate searches and content sharing.

“We know from research that our readers want news that is hyper-local and useful to their daily lives. Our newspaper is experiencing the challenges of changing reader needs and fundamental shifts in spending by our traditional advertisers,” said Denise Palmer, president and publisher of the Tribune. “We are reducing resources in areas that are in decline and investing in areas of growth, including local news and the Internet.”

Sources: Follow the Media, St.Petersberg Times through Poynter Romenesko