SAN JOSE, Calif. --
By NBC11's Daniel Garza

The Bay Area can expect diminished coverage of local issues as the owner of the region's largest newspapers slashes jobs because of declining advertising revenues, according to experts.

California Newspaper Partnership, controlled by Denver-based MediaNews Group, operates 17 daily and weekly newspapers in the Bay Area, including the Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times.

The privately held company has offered voluntary buyouts to 1,100 non-union employees in the Bay Area in an effort to reduce costs.

"Publisher Mac Tully cited a serious drop in advertising revenue as the reason for the cost reduction, which will be completed in early March. The reductions will be the third round of staff cuts since September 2006," the Mercury News reported on its Web site Tuesday.

Union members have not been told yet how many of their jobs would be eliminated, said Luther Jackson, administrative director of the San Jose Newspaper Guild.

Union members would get at least two weeks of severance pay for every year of service. Some long-time members, however, could qualify for up to 60 weeks of severance pay, Jackson said.

In 2000, the union represented 800 workers. But staff reductions at the Mercury News have cut union membership to 400.

"This certainly casts a pall on any spirit of innovation that is needed at the paper," Jackson said.

Nationally, the newspaper industry is experiencing major job losses as circulation declines and advertising follows. The Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, announced last week that it would eliminate 400 to 500 jobs companywide.

Newspapers and TV stations are struggling with the loss of readers and viewers as a growing number of consumers get their news from the Internet.

"The trick is for newspapers to come up with a model to generate revenue with new media. And nobody has figured out a way to do that," said Neil Henry, professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

"Five years ago, nobody would have predicted this," said James Bettinger director of Stanford University's Knight Fellowships program and former Mercury News city editor. "I don't think anybody knows where the bottom is."

Bettinger said the job cuts would diminish the coverage of investigative and in-depth reporting at the local level.

He cited a recent series of stories by Mercury News reporter Karen de Sa about the troubled juvenile dependency court. Bettinger said she had a year to work on the story.

He said newspapers with shrinking staffs would not be able to devote those kinds of resources to stories in the future. "I don't think it can help the quality and quantity of local coverage," Bettinger said. "The implications for the democratic process and political process are enormous."

"The people losing their jobs are experts at covering city hall, politics, local sports," Henry said. "This has a detrimental effect on the public's ability to learn about critical issues."

Critics of the cuts by MediaNews said the company is too focused on eliminating jobs and saving money, which in the long run risks the viability of local newspapers. "At some point there has to be a growth strategy," Jackson said.