SARASOTA -- The Herald-Tribune will lay off fewer than a dozen employees during the next few months as it outsources the group that takes classified advertisements over the phone and makes other less visible operational changes.

The move, which will allow customers to phone in classified advertisements 24 hours a day, will likely be completed by the end of April.

Faced with a growing migration of ad dollars to the Internet, the Herald-Tribune and other newspapers in the 15-paper New York Times Regional Media Group will be engaged all year in finding ways to cut costs and increase efficiencies, Herald-Tribune publisher Diane McFarlin told staff members on Monday.

The goal is to keep profits on target as print advertising revenues subside from their real-estate-induced peaks during 2006, and also to spend more going after multimedia markets.

Other papers in the chain are making cost-saving moves that are appropriate for them. Some are being announced at the same time that the Herald-Tribune moves toward the new classified system.

For example, the Hendersonville Times-News in North Carolina will close its printing plant and instead print at the Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald-Journal, another New York Times Co.-owned paper. Hendersonville will lay off 35 people, including both full- and part-time workers.

More changes are ahead, McFarlin said.

"Our industry is in the throes of change," she said. "At the same time we are dealing with local economic conditions that have affected sales locally. I think the key to success is to deal with this in a way that will maintain our print strength while building our capability in new media."

Circulation-related marketing for the regional group will soon be centralized at the chain's headquarters in Tampa.

That may result in some job losses at some of the chain's papers. It is less clear whether that will result in any job losses in Sarasota.

The Herald-Tribune is a 116,000-circulation daily newspaper with its own television station, SNN News 6.

The newsroom publishes six editions daily, an online edition and several weeklies and magazines. Its prime readership area is Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties.

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