The Roanoke Times today announced a companywide wage freeze and a five-day unpaid furlough, as a way to curb expenses in a national recession that has hit newspapers and their advertisers particularly hard.

The wage freeze, effective immediately, will continue through the end of 2009.

The furlough, which will require all full-time and some part-time employees to take off five days without pay, will begin in February. The unpaid days will fall one Monday a month through June. Those days are Feb. 16, March 16, April 13, May 11 and June 15.

The Roanoke Times offices will be closed on these dates, though the newspaper will be published and delivered to customers.

"In applying these changes to all employees across the board, we are trying to be as fair and equitable as possible," said Debbie Meade, president and publisher of The Roanoke Times, in a news release. "We are being proactive in managing our business, in an effort to protect jobs and assure that we remain a solid, profitable company in a tough economy."