McClatchy CEO sees no bottom for newspapers

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. newspaper business still has not seen the bottom of a persistent deterioration in advertising revenue, and growing Internet revenue will not compensate for the declines, McClatchy Co (MNI.N) Chief Executive Gary Pruitt said on Monday.

"I can't tell you where the bottom is," Pruitt told Reuters after the publisher of the Sacramento Bee and Miami Herald said it will cut about 1,400 jobs, or 10 percent of its work force.

"McClatchy will likely end up with online revenues around a couple hundred million dollars this year," Pruitt said. "But it will not equal print revenue in the foreseeable future."

The cuts announced Monday are McClatchy's largest in recent history, but Pruitt would not say it was the last round. "We're hopeful to avoid further rounds of work force reductions," he said.

Pruitt said McClatchy plans to remain publicly traded despite the bad news and the effect that falling ad revenue has had on its stock price.

(Reporting by Robert MacMillan and Kenneth Li; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)