Oakland loses Tribune, with paper folded into new East Bay Times

Copies of the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, and Oakland Tribune for sale in San Francisco on March 1, 2016. The Bay Area News Group, which owns the papers, announced an organizational shakeup, reducing all its newspapers to two. less Copies of the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, and Oakland Tribune for sale in San Francisco on March 1, 2016. The Bay Area News Group, which owns the papers, announced an organizational shakeup, ... more Photo: Greg Keraghosian Photo: Greg Keraghosian Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Oakland loses Tribune, with paper folded into new East Bay Times 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

No longer will a daily newspaper bear the name of Oakland or San Jose due to a mass consolidation by Bay Area News Group, which on Tuesday also announced plans to cut roughly 20 percent of the company’s newsroom staff.

Half a dozen Bay Area newspapers will be folded into two daily publications meant to serve the East Bay and South Bay.

The last daily edition of the 150-year-old Oakland Tribune will be published April 4.

On April 5, the East Bay will get its first look at the East Bay Times — a consolidation of the Contra Costa Times, the Oakland Tribune, the Daily Review in Hayward and the Argus, which serves Fremont. The company will also replace the contracostatimes.com and insidebayarea.com websites with a new East Bay focused site, eastbaytimes.com.

Every Friday, subscribers in Oakland, Hayward and Fremont will receive hyper-local news inserts bearing the mastheads of the Oakland Tribune, the Daily Review and the Argus, respectively.

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In the South Bay and on the Peninsula, the San Mateo County Times will join the San Jose Mercury News to become the Mercury News, also debuting on April 5.

Bay Area News Group president and publisher Sharon Ryan pointed to a 2015 survey of readers as the impetus for the changes.

“We are committed to enhancing the quality of that journalism and creating an economic model that ensures a thriving BANG and a well-informed Bay Area community,” Ryan wrote in a memo to employees. “Readers have been quite clear with us about how much they like their newspapers and what they want more of, and we’re changing to serve them better. We’ll give them better focused front page stories that cover national and Bay Area news from each region’s point of view.”

It’s the company’s latest effort to streamline operations and cut costs at a time when newspapers across the country are struggling for survival.

Roughly 20 percent of the news group’s 200 newsroom employees are expected to lose their jobs — some through voluntary buyouts, and others in layoffs.

A total of 23 buyouts will be offered to newsroom employees age 60 or older, who have been with their paper for at least 20 years. There are only 30 people company-wide who meet these conditions. Out of the 23 newsroom buyouts, only five will be offered to reporters, said Dan Smith, BANG’s vice president of audience.

On top of that, 10 to 20 employees will be fired.

“I’m just so sad for journalism,” said a journalist at the Oakland Tribune, who asked that her name be withheld because she feared for her job. “They say people want more local news, yet we’ll be giving them far less news. How does that make sense?”

Journalists at the Bay Area publications found out about the changes Tuesday morning in regional meetings. The brunt of the cuts, employees were told Tuesday, will be made to jobs related to production, meaning copy editors and designers.

“Management claims the readers asked for this,” said Carl Hall, the executive officer of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, the union that represents journalists at both the Bay Area News Group and The Chronicle. “I have a hard time believing too many people demanded a 20 percent or more reduction in editorial staff from their already devastated newsrooms.”

He criticized Bay Area News Group leaders for lacking foresight and a commitment to journalism, and said the loss of the Oakland Tribune, which has served the East Bay for 150 years, would be to the community’s detriment.

“I’m not naive about the economics of this business, but it is long overdue to stop relying on cuts and start finding a business plan that actually works,” Hall said. “This is a deep, deep cut. These papers do not have any excess left in them. Everybody there is functioning at full tilt already, so here we go again, asking our newsrooms to do more with less.”

As of 2015, the Bay Area News Group had a circulation of 525,000 print copies on Sundays and just under 400,000 daily.

Bay Area News Group leaders on Tuesday emphasized a commitment to digital journalism and staying relevant amid media’s changing landscape.

The news group announced that it would also be adding jobs to the East Bay newsroom for subjects in which readers expressed the most interest: environment, transportation and local business coverage.

Digital First Media, a New York publishing company that is controlled by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, owns the Bay Area News Group.

Digital First Media is the second-largest U.S. newspaper chain by circulation — about 67 million readers across 15 states, according to its website. Its papers include the Salt Lake Tribune, Los Angeles Daily News, St. Paul Pioneer Press, New Haven Register and Denver Post, among others.

Union leaders from several of Digital First’s papers have joined efforts to push for “fair wages and job security” at their papers, where some workers have gone eight to 10 years without a raise.

Bay Area managers were scheduled to meet with union representatives Wednesday morning.

Marissa Lang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mlang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Marissa_Jae