Donald Newhouse, who oversees the newspaper portion of Jersey Journal parent company Advance Publications, lands at number 55 on the list, with a reported net worth of $5.9 billion.

The 81-year-old, who lives in Somerset County, has seen his fortune rise by $500 million since 2010, according to Forbes, “thanks to an increase in ad revenue and the stock performance of media and entertainment network Discovery Communications, owner of Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC and others (he and [his brother] Si own a stake).”

Workers at the paper have been without a contract since June 2009. As we reported last spring, the Newspaper Guild was trying to wrap its contract negotiations into the negotiations happening at that time to keep the paper afloat. But management refused to tackle both at once, and while the Journal stayed open, it lost five guild members; two editorial managers; and a handful of accounting, circulation, and sales staffers.

The union says that with the cost-savings generated by all of 2009′s personnel cuts, the privately-held media conglomerate Advance, whose properties include everything from the Star-Ledger and NJ.com to Vogue magazine and the New Yorker, should be able to pony up for small raises.

“Times are tough in the newspaper business. No one disputes that,” guild spokesman John Phillips says in a statement. “But management has axed jobs, saving upwards of $400,000 the last two years. Whose pockets get that money? Not the employees. Surely management can afford modest raises for the reporters, photographers and editors who work long hours at very modest wages to produce the news.”

The union says Advance is trying to end its contributions to worker pensions and move the staffers to a less-generous health benefits package, which employees will have to pay more for, but it is offering them no concessions in return, despite the increased workload many staffers have experienced after last year’s buyouts. (Some longtime staffers have lived through earlier buyouts as well — the editorial staff has seen a massive shrinkage over the past few decades, from about 60 in 1972 to barely a dozen today.)

Instead, Advance continues its push to bring on more interns to handle larger portions of the day-to-day work at the paper. Ron Leir, who has since left the paper, told us last year that management was also looking for ways to remove the nine-month cap currently placed on an intern’s tenure; they are still trying to accomplish this change, which would allow the lower-paid and non-union workers to stay on indefinitely.

The guild says a 1.5-percent raise for its members would only cost Advance about $5,000 total. In a press release, it contrasts that with Advance owner Sam Newhouse’s multi-million dollar yacht, which the guild says costs more than $20,000 to fill up with gasoline.

“Hey, Newhouse! Stow your yacht for a day and don’t cut our pay!” one staffer’s protest sign read yesterday.

Phillips says that even a small gesture from management to ease the financial burden on the paper’s staffers would be welcomed. He points out that Advance is charging workers to park in the company lot — at a rate of about $50 a month — while expecting them to maintain their cars for company business.

“Cutting just that fee would make a significant positive financial impact on our members,” he says.

The Journal staffers will be outside the paper’s offices at 30 Journal Square beginning today at noon.

In a memo sent to employees today (see below), Ledger publisher Richard Vezza says the paper sits “at a very precarious point” and will once again offer a voluntary buyout program to non-union staffers and may reduce some staff salaries.

This comes on the heels of the 2008 buyout, which 304 employees took advantage of, and last year’s salary reductions and worker furloughs. Unlike the buyout of two years ago, Vezza did not set a target number of employees in today’s memo.

Vezza says the paper is on track to lose about $10 million this year; last year it lost about $9 million.

“Obviously, losses of this magnitude are unsustainable and threaten our continued existence,” he writes.

The Star-Ledger and the Jersey Journal, as well as the NJ.com internet operation, are all owned by Advance Publications.

HERE’S VEZZA’S MEMO:

After seeing our financial performance for the first seven months of this year and projecting the remainder of the year, it’s clear that we need to further reduce costs. Our past efforts have helped in moving us toward the success we must have to continue publishing, but, our ad revenues have continued to decline in this unprecedented recession and we are now at a very precarious point.

Based on our first seven months of actual performance and our projection for the remainder of the year, it is likely the Company will lose approximately $10 million this year. This follows a year, 2009, in which we lost about $9 million. Obviously, losses of this magnitude are unsustainable and threaten our continued existence.

In order to ensure the future of the Star-Ledger, we need to reorganize our Company and take appropriate, if difficult, actions.

At the heart of these efforts to reduce costs and create efficiencies is a voluntary buyout program and an adjustment of some salaries based on job duties and what newspapers of a similar size and situation are paying for those jobs. We also are looking to restructure some functions performed by certain job titles.

The details of the buyout offer and whether the wage adjustments and position modifications will affect you will be discussed with you by your Department Heads. In the interim, here is a quick overview of the voluntary buyout offer.

* Full-time, non-represented employees, excluding Department Heads, hired prior to January 1, 2006 are eligible to apply for a voluntary buyout equal to one-year of their current salary.

* Medical benefits will continue during the one year period.

Department Heads and Human Resources will evaluate the buyout applications and determine whether business needs will permit the Company, within its sole discretion, to accept an application for the buyout. The buyout papers will be mailed to your home. If you do not receive them, please contact HR.

Once you receive the buyout papers, you will have up to 45 days to decide whether you would like to apply for the buyout. If you wish to apply, you must sign the papers in the HR Department and in front of an HR representative no later than 45 days after your receipt of the papers. After you have signed the papers, you will have seven days to rescind your application by submitting your rescission in writing to HR.

= = =

The salary adjustments are being made because, for many jobs, salaries do not accurately reflect the functions performed. In these difficult times, we must ensure that our employees are paid fairly and appropriately for the jobs they perform. Additionally, in this reorganization, certain job duties may be combined and some individuals will find that they have been given additional duties and responsibilities.

= = =

We also are contacting the unions and notifying them of our desire to sit down with them and discuss the Newspaper’s dire need to cut costs and create efficiencies. We are confident that those discussions will be productive because a viable Star-Ledger is in everybody’s best interest.

As we look back over the last two years, we have made progress. But much more progress is required for The Star-Ledger to be placed on firm footing. There is a lot at stake here. We are all in this together and with your help I’m confident we can overcome all obstacles.

Richard Vezza

“The paper is living on to fight another day,” Bayonne reporter and Newspaper Guild Local 42 president Ron Leir says, “partly as a result of sacrifices made by employees.”

Those sacrifices include the departure of five editorial employees, several who have spent decades at the paper. Leir says that he is taking a buyout, along with sports reporter Leon Banks, life editor Rebecca Markley, columnist Earl Morgan, and arts editor Jeff Theodore. That leaves seven guild positions in the editorial department. All eight editorial management positions were spared. Two of the eight editorial managers also took a buyout.*

The guild also is facing the expiration of their contract — and the possibility of more job losses — in early June. Leir says they had tried to roll the next contract negotiations into these discussions, but that management balked.

Leir understandably has “mixed feelings” about leaving the paper where he’s worked since 1972.

“You get up every morning and you know where you’re going. You do that for as long as I have, and you don’t have to think about your place in the universe,” he says, adding that he will be “exploring my other passion, which is acting,” and will continue doing some writing.

The staffers will be leaving by May 1, according to Leir, and the Journal‘s single-copy newsstand price, currently at 50 cents, may rise by an unspecified amount. He adds that future plans might include cutting features and syndicated items as well.

“I appreciate all that the Jersey Journal has done for me,” Leir says. “I’m just hoping that the paper can continue to survive for another one hundred years.”

MORE: Editor & Publisher is reporting that 12 other positions are being cut at the Journal, in the accounting, circulation, and sales departments. Spokespeople for the unions representing the drivers and the administrative professionals employed at the paper were not able to be reached this morning.

* Correction: The original version of this story said that no editorial management staffers at the Journal took buyouts. That is incorrect — two editorial managers are leaving: sports editor Angela Daidone and weeklies editor Danny Klein.

The Ann Arbor News will cease publication in July after publishing daily since 1835. In announcing the decision to employees, publisher Laurel Champion said the “business model is not sustainable.” Instead, Advance will operate AnnArbor.com, a news site that will also publish a print edition twice a week.

Meanwhile, Advance says it is instituting mandatory 10-day furloughs and a pension freeze at almost all of its newspapers outside of Michigan. These changes will not affect the Journal, a company spokesperson tells Editor & Publisher. However, they will affect the Star-Ledger.

- Jersey City is hoping that former EPA deputy administrator W. Michael McCabe will be the site administrator for the cleanup of toxic chromium waste near 900 Garfield Ave. The city and state settled last month with PPG Industries on a preliminary site cleanup plan. Other suits against PPG are still moving forward, though, as many community members don’t think the settlement goes far enough. Look for JCI‘s report on the cleanup tomorrow.

- In an op-ed, JCPD Sgt. Ed Carattini argues that the city’s police and firefighters — especially in management positions — do not accurately reflect the diversity of the city.

- Six HudCo residents — including three from Jersey City — have been indicted on charges they operated a credit card fraud and identity theft ring.

- The financial pressure being applied on the Jersey Journal by owner Advance Publications partly has to do with the fact that other, more-profitable arms of the media conglomerate are no longer quite as profitable, and thus aren’t able to prop up a paper that reportedly loses money each year. In the latest woeful news to come out of Advance, Advertising Age reports that more cuts are coming to the company’s Conde Nast Media Group.

- Art critic Dan Bischoff reviews the “Industrial Strength: Precisionism and New Jersey” exhibit that opens at the Jersey City Museum on Thursday night. In an interesting passage, he compares contemporary artists that fetishize Jersey’s industrial ruin with the Precisionists: “Contemporary painters are most often attracted by the spread of industrial rot, with its views of abandoned factories and the rusting machine plants left over from the boom days of World War II, while Precisionists were in awe of America’s productive capacity and tended to fit their industrial silhouettes into simplified, almost Cubist, patterns.”

- The Jersey City Medical Center has unveiled a new mural in its pediatric waiting room, courtesy of Bayonne’s Jamile Borges.

In statewide news:

- Many South Jersey municipalities are deciding against deferring half of their state pension obligations this year, fearful of heavier debts down the road.

- The New Jersey Council on the Arts has released the guidelines for its Staffing Preservation program, which is expected to distribute $336,900 in federal stimulus money to NJ arts organizations to support positions that have been eliminated or targeted for elimination/reduction of hours.

- In a test run, a slurry of microscopic iron particles will be pumped into the ground at an old industrial park in Passaic to neutralize a plume of toxic pollution. If it works, the process could be used to clean up a wide variety of contamination, including solvents, pesticides, PCBs and heavy metals.

- The state Supreme Court has rejected a Republican effort to force Gov. Corzine to release email exchanges with former girlfriend Carla Katz, who was president of the largest state workers’ union.

- The fight over building a strip mall in the Palisades in North Bergen has been officially tabled by the Hudson County Planning Board.

- The state sued Verizon yesterday over its alleged “deceptive and misleading” marketing practices for its FiOS service.

- NJ home prices are dropping by an average of about 1 percent a month, and will likely not stabilize before the fourth quarter, appraiser Jeffrey Otteau says. He predicted a 9 percent decline in prices for 2009 overall.

- The EPA is calling for the immediate closing of three waterfront sites along the Raritan Bay in Old Bridge and Sayreville due to health concerns after finding high levels of lead in the area.

- Will the recession slow the state’s open space purchases?

- The state has extended payment of accidental death benefits to survivors of public employees who die while serving on active duty in the military.

- Doubts are mounting about a 2009 opening date for the beleaguered Xanadu project in the Meadowlands.

Reached this afternoon, Leir tells JCI that the union finally received details of the buyout plan in writing and is currently reviewing the proposal with an attorney, buying a little more time for its employees. He says the two sides have another meeting scheduled for next Tuesday.

As of tomorrow, March 13, the Journal will be faced with the daunting prospect of entering what could be the final month of publication in its storied 142-year history.

As part of concessions it is trying to wring from employees to prevent the paper’s closure, Advance last week asked the union representing editorial employees to have between four and six of its 13 members voluntarily leave the paper. Under the company’s proposal, employees leaving the paper would receive their contractually-obligated severance (anywhere from two to 48 weeks, depending on length of service) and paid health coverage for that same amount of time. The company had also said it wanted to remove the nine-month cap currently placed on an intern’s tenure at the paper.

At this week’s meeting, management “summarily rejected” the union’s proposal (detailed below) and said it would stick with its original offer, according to reporter Ron Leir, who is president of Local 42. (Publisher Kendrick Ross has yet to return our requests for comment on the situation at the Journal.)

The union first attempted to renegotiate its contract, which will expire in June, with a three-year proposal that included a 2.5 percent pay raise each of those years. The proposal also extended the intern tenure cap from nine to 18 months and raised that position’s designated salary. Leir says management “had no interest” in long-term contract talks before the paper’s survival was ensured.

With the contract renegotiation stalled, the Guild addressed the paper’s buyout plan. It proposed that the employees who stepped forward and left the paper should get a “bonus” payment of 1.5 weeks pay for each year of service, or a minimum of at least 12 weeks pay, on top of the contractual severance pay. It also proposed that the paid health care aspect be changed to a flat 18 months of coverage, unless the person received coverage from a new employer. Lastly, the union asked that the severance and “bonus” be paid whether or not the paper stays open, but that the health coverage only be applied if the paper keeps publishing.

Management rejected the offer and asked the editorial staffers to come to a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday with a list of employees who are ready to take the buyout and leave the paper.

Leir says that so far they have four staffers on such a list, though he declines to name names.

After losing their fight for a better deal, it seems like Leir and his colleagues have little choice but to bend to the will of the parent company. They see it as the only way to save their paper.

“Our hope is that the paper will be around after April 13,” he says.

Whether or not these editorial buyouts will even be enough to keep that hope alive remains to be seen.

Reporter Ron Leir, the president of the Newspaper Guild’s Local 42, says that when he started as a full-time employee at the Journal in February 1972, there were about 60 editorial department employees. By 2002, that number had shrunk to 36, and today Leir says it is about 13. And at a meeting this week between editorial employees and management, the company expressed its interest in getting four to six additional newsroom staffers to leave voluntarily.

We should have said that there are 13 editorial employees that are part of the Guild — in addition, there are eight editorial positions considered “management” positions.

The story has been amended to reflect the more accurate information.

photo by wally g

Early in February, while checking the streams of Facebook status updates of my acquaintances, I came across an interesting tidbit: Someone had joined the group “Save the Jersey Journal.”

There were only a handful of members, but it was just a week after the Evening Journal Association, which publishes the tabloid daily, announced an April 13 expiration date for the 142-year-old paper if its revenue was not sufficient to support a “reduced expense plan.”

Since then, the Facebook group has grown quickly as the fate of the newspaper remains uncertain. As of this writing, it had 124 members, including Ward E Councilman Steven Fulop and mayoral candidate Dan Levin.

“I decided it was the very least I could do to show the publishers that people care,” Kate Kaye says when asked why she started the group. The 36-year-old journalist who covers the digital marketing industry says she is all too familiar with the woes of the newspaper business, but she felt she needed to do something about the potential loss of the Journal.

“I realize to many this seems like a futile effort, and as one who has covered the online newspaper sector for years as a business reporter, I’m well aware of the reality — and cynicism — print papers face,” she says. “But I’m also someone who recognizes the value of having a daily print publication for any city for historical, cultural, communal, political, and utilitarian purposes.”

Much of the print media industry has been decimated over the past decade, as more and more people have turned to the internet — often branded web extensions of an existing print product — for news. It’s an old story by now: Circulations are sliding, ad revenues are in the tank and newspapers can’t figure out how to make money online.

It is in this environment that the Journal, which I freelanced for several years ago, currently finds itself. The paper, which is owned by the Newhouse family’s privately-held media conglomerate Advance Publications, has reportedly faced declining circulation, staff numbers and revenue for years. (Journal Publisher Kendrick Ross did not respond to our invitations to comment on this story.)

In 2005, when the paper transitioned from a broadsheet format to the current tabloid look, the New York Times reported that daily circulation was at 26,600, down from a peak of around 150,000 in the mid-1970s. This circulation slide came despite the Journal‘s absorption of its last major competitor, the Hudson Dispatch, in 1991. (The Journal merged with two other main competitors — the Jersey Observer and the Bayonne Times — in 1951 and 1971, respectively.) In 2002, when the paper faced similar threats of closure, reports said the Journal was losing as much as $4 million annually.

Reporter Ron Leir, the president of the Newspaper Guild’s Local 42, says that when he started as a full-time employee at the Journal in February 1972, there were about 60 editorial department employees. By 2002, that number had shrunk to 36, and today Leir says it is about 13 there are 13 editorial employees that are part of the Guild. (There are also eight editorial positions considered “management.”)* And at a meeting this week between editorial employees and management, the company expressed its interest in getting four to six additional newsroom staffers to leave voluntarily.

What kind of fat incentives is the paper offering for those who choose to leave? Paid health coverage for as much time as the employee would normally be entitled to severance pay under the union’s current contract.

Leir explains that this would range from as little as two or three weeks to 48 weeks, the mark at which severance pay is capped. Translated: If Leir, who has been employed full-time at the paper for 37 years, decides to take management up on its offer, he will be rewarded with less than one year of health coverage.

In addition, the company seeks to remove the nine-month cap currently placed on an intern’s tenure at the paper. Leir says the Journal now has “nearly as many” interns as staff writers, and that as higher-level editorial employees have moved on or moved up, their positions often haven’t been filled. Instead, they’ve often been replaced by interns. He says that the company also wants “total flexibility” if the paper survives past April 13, which translates to assigning any type of job to any reporter at any time.

“They want the ultimate efficiency machine,” Leir says.

When asked how a newsroom of less than 20 people could produce a comprehensive daily paper — and do it well — Leir acknowledges that’s “part of our concern” and says “we need to negotiate a better deal.” They will attempt to do just that when they present some sort of counter-proposal to management next week.

Other departments at the paper have shrunk as well. For example, as part of the last-minute 2002 deal that kept the paper alive, the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers’ Union agreed to halve the number of members employed by the Journal, from 18 to 9. During those same talks, the Professional Employees International Union also agreed to shed half of its employees.

To make matters worse, some observers say the paper’s slow embrace of web technology has put it in an untenable position going forward.

“The Journal needs to improve its presence on the internet,” Ian MacAllen, proprietor of the New York’s Sixth blog, says. “It treats the internet too much like a facsimile of the printed page and doesn’t really take advantage of the possibilities of multimedia, interactivity and the infinite column inches of HTML.”

The 27-year-old Harsimus Cove resident, who reads stories from dozens of papers every day but hasn’t read a printed paper “in two or three years,” says the Journal has failed to address — much less win over — readers like him.

“I’ve been reading the Journal and NJ.com since 2001, and I still don’t know how to navigate through the site,” he says. “The look and feel is still very early 2000s. The site is confusing, poorly laid out, and even the ad placement is not really optimal.”

While MacAllen believes that the city absolutely still needs a daily paper, he doesn’t think it necessarily needs to be printed — or necessarily has to be the Journal.

“The differentiating factor between a publication like the Jersey Journal and some guy in his grandmother’s basement is not whether or not a printing press is used, but in the level of professionalism,” he says. “For some time that professionalism has been absent from the Journal, even if it arrives on paper.”

While Kaye admits that the paper could be improved, she says that the prospect of having no paper is far worse.

“Whether or not the paper always does the best job of covering our city, we need it,” she says. “A lot of people still rely on print papers to read while commuting on the train, enjoying their morning coffee at the diner, whatever.” In addition, many people in the city are still on the wrong side of the digital divide, and they need to be serviced by a print product.

Thurman Hart, a political science lecturer at New Jersey City University, local blogger and member of the Facebook group, agrees that the city needs the daily.

“Given the back-room nature of Jersey politics, just being able to know who to talk to about issues takes a bit of traveling along the learning curve, and the Journal has maintained a staff with sufficient know-how to pull that off,” he says. “If the best disinfectant is sunlight, then the demise of the Journal will do nothing but contribute to the ability of self-interest and graft to defeat the public will in Jersey City.”

Hart says he’s heard the rumors that if the Journal closes, the Star-Ledger, which is also owned by Advance, would begin to cover Hudson County on a more regular basis. But he doesn’t think that’s a great solution either. “I’m sure that the quality of the coverage (as well as the quantity) would suffer,” he says.

For now, the fate of the Journal hangs in the balance and for many, the deathwatch has begun. In 2002, when the paper last faced imminent closure, then-U.S. Rep. Bob Menendez got involved in negotiations and Mayor Glenn Cunningham reached out to the owners with a lucrative incentive package of tax breaks, loans and grants to help keep the paper open. Advance rebuffed the mayor’s advances, telling the New York Times that “under no circumstances should we be seen to even be considering any assistance.”

It looks as if Advance won’t have to worry about “considering any assistance” this time anyway, at least from City Hall. “While we never want to see any newspaper go out of print, especially our local newspaper,” Mayor Healy says, “the Jersey City taxpayers do not have the resources — particularly at this time — to assist in this situation.”

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. The Journal has started running house ads hawking yearly subscriptions at the bargain basement price of $60 (the normal rate is $120 for a year), Leir remains “guardedly optimistic” about the paper’s future, and Kaye is looking at ways to expand her activism beyond the internet.

“As someone who’s covered digital activism tactics and technologies as a reporter, I’ve had a healthy skepticism regarding their efficacy,” she says. She recognizes that many people in the city don’t even know about the threat to the Journal, much less the Facebook group. In hopes of raising public awareness, she’s also been distributing flyers around the city and is considering getting people together in a meeting or organizing an event to promote subscriptions.

“It’s another crisis to overcome,” Leir says with the weary but level-headed tone of a veteran of previous union battles. “For the sake of our readers, we hope that we can continue to productively serve them the best we can, considering the circumstances.”

*You can find the Save the Jersey Journal Facebook group on the web here.

* We originally reported that there were 13 total editorial employees at the Journal, based on our conversation with reporter Ron Leir. During a subsequent conversation, he pointed out that the 13 figure actually represented the number of editorial employees in the Guild he leads, and that there were eight additional editorial “managers” at the paper. We regret the confusion.