NJ’s Largest Paper, Star-Ledger, Cuts 40 News Jobs

New Jersey’s largest newspaper is cutting about 170 jobs, including 25 percent of its newsroom positions, as it moves to consolidate operations and cut costs.

The Star-Ledger reported Thursday on NJ.com that the cuts will mean the loss of 40 of the 156 newsroom staffers at the paper.

Other journalists at the newspaper are being offered jobs at NJ Advance Media, a new company being created by parent company Advance Publications to provide content, advertising and marketing services to all of its papers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Matt Kraner, the president of the new company and of NJ.com, which runs a website for the newspapers, said all 36 newsroom employees and 37 business-side workers at the website are also being laid off. He said several of them are being offered jobs at NJ Advance Media.

Additional journalists are also to be hired for the new company.

When the restructuring is complete on Sept. 8, the number of reporters and photographers working for The Star-Ledger and website combined will be higher than it is now, Kraner said.

“We’ll have more feet on the street than what we currently have,” he said. “That’s been our overarching priority.”

Kraner would not comment on whether workers moving to the new company would be brought in at lower salaries.

Company officials say all four of Advance’s daily papers in the region — The Star-Ledger, The Times of Trenton, the South Jersey Times and The Express-Times of Easton, Pa. — will continue publishing seven days a week.