Focus on Family cutting 202 jobs

COLORADO SPRINGS, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Focus on the Family, the Colorado group that is one of the pillars of the Christian right, has announced it is cutting 202 jobs.

The jobs will be eliminated by a combination of laying off 149 members of the staff and removing 53 vacant positions from the organization chart, The Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs reported. About one-fifth of the positions are in management.

Focus officials said that four of its eight magazines will now appear only on-line.

Glenn Williams, the organization's chief operating officer, said that this would save money without significantly reducing readership. Plugged In, one of the four to lose its print edition, gets 1 million unique visitors a month on its Web site, while the print edition has a circulation of 30,000.

Williams said that donations, which account for 95 percent of the organization's budget, are down.

"Looking at October trends and talking to donors who are not in a position where they can give, we thought we'd be facing a more severe decision in January or February if we waited," Williams told The Gazette.