Employees of Washington City Paper have been told that their salaries will be reduced 40 percent starting January 1 as SouthComm, the company that owns the alt-weekly newspaper, continues to look for a buyer to take over the 36-year-old publication, reports Washingtonian, which added that the pay cut was first reported by WRC’s Mark Segraves, and confirmed to Washingtonian by a source familiar with the conference call in which SouthComm’s chief financial officer, Bob Mahoney, relayed the news.

Washingtonian stated that the move “is likely to drop most editorial salaries at City Paper below $30,000 per year, which a source described as an “unlivable” figure. And it’s guaranteed to destroy morale even more inside the paper, which has been up for sale since October. One potential buyer, conservative political commentator Armstrong Williams, announced last week he will not be acquiring the publication. (A Washington Post story about Williams’s potential offer suggested he might have remade the typically anti-establishment City Paper as a glossy tabloid full of soft features on Trump administration figures; the idea was roundly panned by the alt-weekly’s readers.)”

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(Washington City Paper Image)