In a move that's both sad and expected, The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) is planning to eliminate as many as 100 newsroom positions from its flagship paper.

The move follows cutbacks at the other major papers including the company's Boston Globe as well as The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post. Even though newspaper executives will babble on and on about the Internet, the industry is still a print business and that's the problem. Advertisers continue to find it more cost effective to shift their spending from traditional media onto the Internet. That trend will become even more prevalent as marketing budgets get squeezed in an economic downturn.

It's amazing that the New York-based publisher avoided these cuts until now. If the Sulzberger family didn't have a iron grip over the company through a dual-class ownership structure that minority shareholders have complained for years is unfair, the layoffs would have been much worse. Shareholders may pressure for even deeper cuts if there isn't an improvement in the company's stock which is down 27% over the past year.

Times executive editor Bill Keller is quoted in the paper as saying that the reductions would have an impact on the newspaper's journalism just as it faces heightened competition from Wall Street Journal now owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NYSE: NWS). But even with a reduced staff, the Times even with its flaws is still better than most news organizations.

For now, though, Wall Street has been appeased. Shares of the New York-based publisher rose almost 5% today to $18.84.

Disclosure: I have done freelance work for the New York Times

Freelance writer Jonathan Berr edits the blog Ketchup and Eggs.