Staff are openly talking about a mass cull among news desk and production staff as Times Newspapers looks to reduce its headcount to offset the high cost of producing a broadsheet and a tabloid newspaper.
Industry figures have put the cost of producing the two loss-making papers as high as £15m.
On Friday, high-profile foreign correspondent Christopher Walker took voluntary redundancy. A report in the Evening Standard today says that at least 12 could go, but the figure could be closer to 20.
George Brock, managing editor at The Times who is overseeing the cuts, has told staff that the process will take at least until the end of next week.
One senior insider told Brand Republic that it was expected more would go as the focus increasingly turned to the compact edition.
On Friday, The Times announced it was to roll out the compact nationwide, but said it remained 100% committed to its broadsheet edition as well as the tabloid version.
News of the cuts come as last Friday's newspaper ABC figures show that The Times is going from strength to strength with a third consecutive year-on-year increase. The paper reported an increase of 14,536 copies a day, up 2.28% year on year, giving the paper a circulation of 652,264 with full-price sales up by over 3%.
Robert Thomson, editor of The Times, said: "Whether in compact or broadsheet form, The Times breaks more stories than any other UK newspaper and offers readers unrivalled comment and analysis from the best journalists in the business."
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