Prominent African media firm Naspers Ltd. will lay off 10 percent to 20 percent of its work force at Media24, its South African newspaper group, Bloomberg reported Friday. Three anonymous company employees said the job cuts are a result of plunging advertising.

Naspers announced that its net profits nearly doubled to ZAR3.5 billion (US$3.3 million) over a six-month period ending Sept. 30, following the sale of a pay-TV sector in Greece and Cyprus. Total income increased by 32 percent, whereas print media sales in South Africa surged by 4 percent.

However, the company said last Wednesday that the lay-offs would be a response to the “depressed macro-economic conditions." Media24 CEO Francois Groepe said staff reductions had already begun last year and “further reductions are under way," according to Bloomberg.

Naspers titles such as Afrikaans-language Beeld, Volkslab, Rapport and Die Burger, have experienced a plunge in advertising that was brought about by worsening economic conditions, Media24 head Abraham van Zyl stated in a memo. Ad expenditure dropped by 8 percent from January to August 2008, Bloomberg reported.

“We will not announce the number or percentage of staff reductions,” Groepe told Bloomberg. “Headcount information will however be disclosed in our annual financial statements as has been our practice in the past.”

The media giant also has pay-TV initiatives and Web sites in Russia and China. Although it refused to release the number of print staff currently working in South Africa, its total employees added up to 13,800 on March 31 of this year, Bloomberg data showed.