FROM STAFF REPORTS

About 20 full- and part-time employees at the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel will be laid off this month or will have left their positions voluntarily, through severance packages or resignations.

Publisher John Christie said Monday that the job losses roughly equate 10 percent of the company's payroll. By the end of the process, six or fewer employees will be laid off involuntarily.

"Everyone was helpful and cooperative," said Christie, in a memorandum to employees. "Many were happy to receive a buyout. Others accepted transfers to other jobs with grace and generosity. A few were let go who wished to stay."

Many of the job losses came in the newspapers' production department, the printing area which previously had profitably used its presses to publish weekly and other publications for outside customers. The volume of commercial printing declined in recent months, due to transportation costs and other factors. The company will close that operation at the end of August.

Like many newspapers in the U.S., the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel also have been affected by declining classified-advertising revenues and rising energy, ink and newsprint costs. Christie said the newspapers were more than $200,000 short of their financial targets when he decided to cut the payroll for a second time this year. There was a smaller round of layoffs and job reductions last April.

Among the employees leaving the company voluntarily this month were longtime editor Patty Ammons and pressman Tim Fish.

The newspapers are part of MaineToday Media, Inc., which includes the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, MaineToday and the Coastal Journal weekly newspaper in Bath.

Blethen Maine's owner, the Seattle Times Co., put the Maine newspapers up for sale earlier this year.

A group led by Richard L. Connor, a Bangor native who is editor and publisher of the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and former U.S. Sen. and Defense Secretary William Cohen is exclusively negotiating to buy Blethen Maine.