The New York Times Company has said it will close The Boston Globe if it can not reach agreements with staff regarding pay cuts and pension concessions, The New York Times reported.

The company is seeking US$20 million in savings at The Globe in the latest round of cost cutting moves at the newspaper. The potential closure was revealed on The Globe's Web site last Friday after the company informed union leaders of the potential closure on the Thursday. Quoting an unnamed source, the Web site said that without concessions, The Globe would lose $85 million this year.

The Times Co. brought The Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion - the largest figure ever paid for an American newspaper. At the time and throughout the decade, The Globe was a highly profitable newspaper. Today, The Globe has a readership base of 324,000 during weekdays and 504,000 on Sundays, the 14th and 11th largest in the U.S., respectively, according to The Times.

However, the Boston area has suffered particularly intense declines in both circulation and advertising revenue. Across the industry advertising revenue fell 16.6 percent for 2008, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

The company is cutting costs across the board including at the New York Times, where most employees have been asked to take a 5% pay cut for the rest of 2008. The company has also recently sold its Manhattan headquarters.