1300 employees at San Francisco-area newspapers offered buyouts

SAN FRANCISCO - The publisher of three of the San Francisco Bay area's largest daily newspapers is offering employees buyouts and bracing them for layoffs in another blow to the struggling newspaper industry.

The Bay Area News Group publishes the San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times and other daily and weekly newspapers in the region.

The Mercury News is offering nearly 200 non-union employees buyouts but will also need to lay off an unspecified number of union workers, its publisher and editor told the staff in a newsroom meeting Tuesday.

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