Metro Boston will eliminate its GameDay Sox section, a sports editor, a listings editor, and about eight sales positions, said the employees. The publisher, Stuart Layne who was appointed in December 2006, was pressured to resign, they said.
Layne denied yesterday that he had been pressured and said he had resigned voluntarily.
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"I was brought in to grow the business. It didn't grow as fast as the joint venture had hoped," Layne said. "The Globe would like to be more involved in the operations. I believe that the goal is to utilize the Globe resources to create better efficiencies. They feel they can take better advantage of resources at the Globe - anywhere from sales to IT."
Metro Boston has not named a replacement for Layne.
Rob Patterson, chief executive of the US Metro properties, was in Boston Monday meeting with the publishers of its three US papers - Metro Boston, Metro New York, and Metro Philadelphia. Patterson, who did not return repeated calls for comment, announced the changes in a staff meeting yesterday afternoon at Metro Boston's offices.
Several employees spoke to the Globe on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
Other cuts and leadership departures are planned at the Metro newspapers in Philadelphia and New York, where publisher Daniel Magnus is expected to leave the company this week, employees said. Magnus did not return repeated calls for comment yesterday.
The US newspapers have been a drag on the worldwide publisher's earnings, losing more than $10.6 million in the past 12 months, according to the company, and revenue at Metro Boston fell 12 percent in the third quarter ended Sept. 30. In October, Metro International said it began a strategic review of its underperforming operations, and all three US Metro papers were put up for sale last month.
Representatives from billionaire Philip Anschutz's newspaper company, which publishes free daily papers under the Examiner name, were approached by the company handling the sale of the Metro papers, but Anschutz was not interested, according to his spokesman Jim Monaghan. Dagsbrun, the Icelandic company behind BostonNOW, a free daily that launched in April, had considered buying Metro Boston, but Metro International wanted to sell the three US papers together, said an executive briefed on the talks.
Metro's US papers are published Monday through Friday, target young professionals, and are designed to be read during subway commutes.
A number of major metropolitan papers, including the Chicago Tribune, have launched their own free dailies or bought stakes in existing free publications. But these papers, once viewed as the avenue to younger readers and increased advertising revenue, have struggled along with the rest of the print journalism industry.
"It was a business model that assumed the availability of enough advertising revenue to float these operations, and that's just not the case in this tough market and with the flight of advertising to the Internet," said Louis Ureneck, chairman of Boston University's journalism department.
Jenn Abelson can be reached at abelson@globe.com.
