The gloom began earlier this month, when Gerard Baker, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, sent a memo to employees that said, in part, “every story should be as short as it needs to be.” The next week, William Lewis, the chief executive of Dow Jones, which owns The Journal, announced a newsroom review that he said would be “underpinned by a series of cost-management initiatives.”

Two days later, on Oct. 21, the anvil fell: Mr. Baker informed employees in another memo that The Journal was looking for a “substantial” number of them to take buyouts, and that layoffs were in the offing.

With print advertising continuing to drop precipitously, you would be hard-pressed to find a newsroom devoid of uncertainty anywhere in the country. Companies like Gannett have recently announced layoffs, and its stock price has plunged during a monthslong pursuit of the company that owns The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune. The New York Times recently went through buyouts and has acknowledged that its newsroom will get even smaller next year. And for journalists at The Wall Street Journal, anxiety in the last several weeks has been especially pronounced.

Numerous Journal employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared endangering their jobs, said in interviews and conversations that they have received few specifics from management about the size and scope of the coming cuts. Mr. Baker said in one of his memos last week that changes to the print newspaper would “involve some consolidation of sections of the paper and the teams that produce it.” The employees said that the staff is now openly speculating about the potential for once-prized sections, including Greater New York and Personal Journal, to be folded or significantly reduced. Separately, employees have been working without a union contract since Oct. 1, and negotiations with the company are ongoing.