Mr. Keller said Times management was to meet with the Guild Thursday afternoon to discuss the requested cuts. Calls to Guild officers were not returned.

At smaller parts of the company, including About.com and a chain of small papers, wages will be cut 2.5 percent and employees will get five days off.

The layoffs announced Thursday represent almost 5 percent of the more than 2,000 employees in the business operations of The Times newspaper. The company laid off 27 people in The Times’s advertising department last month, and about 500 people in January, with the closing of City and Suburban, a newspaper and magazine distribution subsidiary. At the end of 2008, the company had 9,346 employees, down from 10,710 working in the same operations two years ago.

Last fall, Times executives said they did not anticipate any news staff reductions in 2009. Similarly, Mr. Keller said on Thursday that with a pay cut, management expects “that the newsroom will get through the year without a round of layoffs.”

“I wish I could make that a promise,” he added. “I can’t.”

In 2008, The Times eliminated 100 newsroom jobs through buyouts and layoffs. But with hiring for new positions, the net reduction was about half that. It has the largest news staff of any paper in the country, and one of few that has not contracted sharply.

Newspaper companies have been drastically shrinking payrolls in the last two years. And in recent months, several have resorted to mandatory unpaid leave, or furloughs, to reduce the number of layoffs.

The Times Company is characterizing its move with nonunion employees as a pay cut rather than a mandatory leave  though in practice, there may be little difference  to avoid strict federal rules governing furloughed employees. Other companies that have used furloughs have told workers, for instance, that they cannot make work-related phone calls or check work e-mail messages while on leave. Whether a cut for union employees is called a furlough will be subject to negotiation.

Separately, The Times newspaper will do away with the expanded index to its articles, created last year, that appears on the second and third pages, returning to something like the smaller guide that used to appear on the second page, saving several millions dollars annually on newsprint.