In what is sure to become a trend across the industry, The Daily Herald out of Chicago cut all employee salaries by 5 percent to combat falling revenues.

Plan now. Many of you will make less money in the near future. Instead of cutting bodies, some newsroom managers will consider slashing salaries as a better option.

In a memo to the staff (and leaked on Romenesko), the paper’s ever-optimistic CEO calls the salary reduction “short-term” and plans for salaries to one day return to their previous levels. Fat chance. In the same memo, the editor mentions exactly why things aren’t ever going to be the way they were during the good ol’ days:

In past cyclical downturns, we have weathered the storm with temporary measures that reduced expenses, awaiting a return of business in the wake of economic recovery. This situation is different and requires short-term expense reduction initiatives as well as long-term structural adjustments in the way we do business, which will position the company for the future. Again, it is important to realize that this newspaper revenue downturn is different from those in the past. Our industry is in the throes of a structural shift of revenue in which growth on the Internet side is not rapid enough to compensate for losses in print advertising.

Cutting people and salaries is not a long-term solution. After all, cutting reporters and editors negatively affects the content of the Web sites that are supposed to serve as savior to their ailing print counterparts. The solution – regardless of how much it hurts print folks to hear – is to cut the number of pages and sections printed in the newspaper. Much more should become online-only.