Industrial action by journalists at French daily Le Monde has been suspended, after the newspaper's management announced job cuts could be fewer than previously suggested, the Guardian reported Wednesday.

The announcement by management was made Wednesday, following an editorial staff meeting at which employees were to vote on whether they would begin a longer strike next Tuesday.

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The Lexington Herald-Leader Co. will offer buyout packages to employees in order to decrease its work force by an estimated four percent to deal with the decreasing advertising and circulation revenue, the Herald-Leader reported Wednesday.

Owned by the McClatchy Co., the Herald-Leader currently has 385 full-time employees and managers.

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The Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer will begin cutting staff numbers, offering voluntary buyouts to an unknown number of employees, the Sacramento Business Journal reported Monday.

The newspaper is making the cuts in an attempt to offset advertising revenue declines, the paper's Web site stated.

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After their merger completion last month, Thomson Reuters is facing its first major industrial dispute, as Thomson’s UK journalists voted to hold an official ballot for industrial action.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) had official recognition and a majority of membership among journalists in either Reuters or Thomson UK operations before the deal, Press Gazette reported.

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Thomson employees voted unanimously to hold a strike ballot, after management at the financial news wire would not agree to use voluntary instead of compulsory redundancies as they look to make job cuts, the Guardian reported Friday.

Thomson recently merged with rival news agency Reuters.

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In a struggling economy, there have been 290,671 job cuts in U.S. during the first four months of this year, up nine percent from the same period last year.

Media industry layoffs, however, jumped to 57 percent more than last year at 7,949 for the four-month period, according to a survey from global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The 2007 full-year layoffs numbered 11,700 in the industry.

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Editorial staff at The New York Times are bracing themselves for layoffs in the next 10 days, the New York Post reported Friday.

About 50 unionized journalists have accepted buyout offers, and another 20 non-union journalists have done the same. This means “the ax could fall on as many as 30 editorial people in the company's first-ever mass firing of journalists in its 156-year history,” the Post reported.

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The Daily Herald in Chicago's suburbs laid off and unspecified number of staffers across its departments, Editor & Publisher reported Thursday.

Paddock Publishing President Doug Ray would not give the exact number of employees cut.

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Torstar, owner of the Toronto Star, announced it will cut 160 jobs and charge C$21 million in an attempt to reorganise its newspaper division, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

The Toronto Star has the highest circulation in Canada.

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The number of U.S. newspaper journalists declined last year by almost five percent to 52,600, the lowest in almost 25 years and the biggest drop in 30 years, according to the figures released by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

The figures reflected the attrition happening in the U.S. media industry, and also aroused a debate over the number of "minority" journalists employed by U.S. papers.

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Le Monde journalists went on strike Monday for the second time the newspaper's history to protest 130 staff cuts in newsroom positions, Reuters reported Tuesday.

Like other newspapers worldwide, the influential French newspaper has been struggling with rising costs and declining advertising revenues, as well as online competition.

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The New York Times could be losing some of its most senior staffers and top names if those taking buyouts and those leaning toward buyouts are accepted, Radar magazine reported Tuesday.

Those already announced to be taking buyouts include three Pulitzer Prize winners: Linda Greenhouse, the paper's Supreme Court correspondent, John Noble Wilford and David Cay Johnston.

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New management at France's Le Monde told staff members Friday that 130 jobs, which includes 25 percent of journalists, may be cut in a plan to keep the paper going after heavy losses, Reuters reported over the weekend.

“To reject it would surely deny us any chance of success and would put the future of the group in danger,” wrote Eric Fottorino, the recently appointed chief executive of the Le Monde Group, and his deputy David Guiraud, in a statement posted on Le Monde's Web site.

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Express Newspaper journalists began their first in a series of three 24-hour strikes protesting the 3 percent pay offer made by the company, BBC News reported Friday.

UK-based Express Newspapers' offer of 3 percent was “well below the 4.3 percent awarded to the company's printers as part of a three-year deal,” the newspaper's union stated.

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Google reported the biggest job reduction in its nine-year history, cutting 300 positions at DoubleClick, the online advertising company it acquired last month for $3.24 billion.

About 300 out of DoubleClick's 1,200 U.S. staffs were fired, or placed in “transitional” roles, according to an email statement from Google.

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