The Honolulu Advertiser will lay off 54 workers, cutting 6.8 percent of its payroll, Editor & Publisher reported Thursday.

The cuts mean the Advertiser is joining “a growing list of newspapers nationwide that have been forced to cut jobs in the wake of a weakening economy and loss of advertising to the Internet,” the newspaper stated in a Thursday article.

“... we are not immune to the national trends affecting the newspaper industry, nor from the downturn in our local economy,” Lee Webber, publisher of the Advertiser, stated in a news release, according to the newspaper's article.

The cuts include nine part-time workers, as well as three full-time and one part-time newsroom staffers, the Advertiser reported.

Wayne Cahill, administrative officer of the Hawaii Newspaper Guild, said he met with management Tuesday for contract negotiations, but was not told of the layoffs, E&P reported. The newspaper's unionised employees have been working under an extended three-year contract that was due to expire in June last year.