The publisher of The Roanoke Times said Friday that the news organization will offer voluntary retirement incentives to 21 employees, and she said more jobs may be eliminated in the future.

"Like the media industry as a whole, we’re taking steps to reinvent our company to remain relevant to our existing customers and to seek out new customers in new markets," said Debbie Meade, president and publisher, in an email announcement to employees. "We’re dealing with business conditions unprecedented in our long history."

Advertising revenue at The Roanoke Times, similar to newspapers across the country, has declined. It’s due mainly to competition from other media sources, such as the Internet, said Nan Mahone, promotions and community relations manager at The Roanoke Times.

She didn’t specify which advertising sectors have been soft.

Landmark Communications, a privately held company based in Norfolk, owns The Roanoke Times.

Mahone said all job reductions, including those opting for the early retirement incentives, could total about 10 percent of the company’s workforce, though specific numbers are not known.

The Roanoke Times employs 450 people, and it has a weekday circulation of 94,000 and 104,000 on Sundays, as of March 31.

It already has eliminated or frozen 27 jobs in the last year, said interim human resources director, Jean Lamkin. The retirement incentives are being offered to 21 full-time employees who are older than 58 and have at least 15 years of service. Of the 21 retirement candidates, six work in the newsroom. Their incentives package includes six months compensation based on 2006 wages, a bridge benefit for Social Security payable until age 62 and a $2,400 benefit enhancement. These incentives are an addition to the employees’ regular pension benefits.

The majority of the people eligible for the early retirement option work in the company’s production departments, such as the press room, she said.

Sept. 1 is the effective date for retirement.

The Roanoke Times last offered early retirement incentives to employees in 1993.

Similar staff reduction measures have been offered earlier in the past year at two other Landmark-owned newspapers, the The News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., and The Virginian Pilot in Norfolk.

Early retirement incentives and other reductions have occurred lately at newspapers across the country, including the San Jose Mercury News in California and the Los Angeles Times.

Last month, another Virginia newspaper, the Daily Press, offered voluntary buyout packages to employees with at least 10 years of service in the face of declining advertising revenue. The buyouts could result in the elimination of 19 to 25 jobs, according to news reports.

Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at The Poynter Institute, a journalism training organization in Florida, estimated last month that there have been at least 20 announced buyouts and layoffs across the country’s newspapers so far in 2007 and as many as 650 jobs eliminated.

He said Friday that classified print advertising generally has suffered the most from Internet competition, because consumers have changed the way they shop. They rely increasingly on the Internet to make buying decisions, he said, such as shopping for a new car.

"Commerce is really changing, and classified is really, as you think about it, clearly as strong online as it is in print," Edmonds said.