The number of staff members working at news weeklies has been declining for some time. Magazines like Time and Newsweek have cut staff significantly over the past few decades. There have been occasional upward blips — Newsweek, for instance, added four people in 2005 — but the trend has been clearly downward.

The year 2005, however, saw some dramatic drops, suggesting that major changes may be under way and that the pace of decline may quicken. In October, U.S. News and World Report underwent cuts that affected the magazine at the highest levels, including chief political correspondent Roger Simon, and more cuts were rumored to be on the way. The cuts left the title with only about 160 people on its editorial staff.1 [1] That is much lower than Time or Newsweek.

In December, after an extremely lackluster year in ad sales. Time Inc. announced it was laying off 105 people from throughout the organization, from the chief of sales to bureau chiefs in Moscow , Beijing , Seoul and Tokyo . The move was portrayed as cutting fat from a bloated hierarchy, but considering Time’s dislike for such upper-level cuts in the past, it suggests a change in attitude at the company.2 [2]

The same week that Time announced its cuts, Business Week let go 60 people in areas from editorial to circulation. Part of the restructuring was the elimination of the magazine’s European and Asian editions.3 [3] Exactly who had been fired and where they worked was not announced, but insiders told the Project that some of the magazine’s most senior correspondents were not immune.

And a month later Time Inc. announced it was planning to lay off another 100 staff members. The biggest hits were at Time and Money, but other titles would be hit as well — even Real Simple, where ad page sales were rising. The cuts were designed to “save as much money as you can now and smartly deploy that money in new launches and an even stronger Web strategy so that you emerge stronger a year or two from now,” said Jim Kelly, Time’s managing editor.4 [4]

Those kinds of reductions, spread out over the industry and compounded by bad ad news, may indicate a larger shift. And there don’t appear to be any signs of growing staffs on the horizon. Even among the newer competitors, the future of the news field seems to be one of smaller staffing.