The Kansas City Star will cut 120 jobs as part of parent McClatchy Co.'s decision to axe 1,400 jobs across its newspapers, The Star reported Tuesday.

The Star's combined readership for print and online is almost four million, but the company continues to struggle, as online revenue, although growing quickly, is not enough to fill the gap made by lost print advertising.

“These cuts are part of the way we must respond as we strategically realign our company for success in this digital age,” Mark Zieman, publisher of The Star, told employees in a memo Monday, the newspaper reported. He told The Star in an interview Monday that he expects 20 to 22 of 285 newsroom positions to be eliminated.

Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy said in a statement that from the end of 2006 until April 2008, it has relied on outsourcing and attrition to cut staff numbers by 13 percent. The current cuts across the company will reduce total work force numbers by 10 percent, or 1,400 jobs, and are aimed at saving McClatchy US$70 million each year as part of a plan to cut expenses by up to $100 million in the next year, The Star reported.

McClatchy is the third-largest newspaper chain in the United States, and owns 30 daily newspapers, including flagship the Sacramento Bee, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Miami Herald, The Charlotte Observer, The (Tacoma) News Tribune, The Olympian and The San Luis Obispo Tribune.

The News Tribune will cut 84 positions, while The Olympian is cutting 17 positions, the Sacramento Bee reported, in a story posted by the Seattle Times. The San Luis Obispo Tribune will lay off five employees this month, the newspaper reported Tuesday.

“The effects of the current national economic downturn — particularly in real estate, auto and employment advertising — make it essential that we move faster now to realign our work force and make our operations more efficient," Gary Pruitt, McClatchy chairman and chief executive, said in a statement, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Newspaper industry analyst John Morton told the Sacramento Bee that “McClatchy is still viewed as a newspaper company that cares about quality,” but that the staff reduction “puts a dent in that, but it's not a deep slash.” Morton told The Star that “McClatchy has always said, 'We don't bulk up in good times and don't lay off in bad,' so this obviously is a change from that.”

In his blog on Monday, Howard Weaver, vice president of news at McClatchy, called the layoffs a “cultural as well as individual trauma for us,” and stated he hopes “this aggressive move will spare us another like it down the road, though there are no absolute certainties in today's volatile environment. We need the the 90% of employees who aren't in the downsizing to focus on the work at hand with confidence, not be looking over their shoulders for another round of layoffs. I hope we can achieve that.”