Hearst Corp's Houston Chronicle is cutting 12 percent of its staff to cope with falling revenue, the Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday.

The latest cuts at the ninth-largest U.S. paper will affect about 200 employees, the WSJ said. No-one at Hearst could immediately be reached for comment.

The move, announced Tuesday by Chronicle Publisher Jack Sweeney, follows major cost-cutting measures by Hearst in response to the weakness in the newspaper industry, the WSJ said.

Last week, Hearst killed the print edition of its ailing Seattle Post-Intelligencer, moving it online.

Faced with falling advertising spending and a worsening economy, newspaper publishers are struggling to rein in expenses and offload debt quickly enough to survive.

Earlier this week, the New York Times Co said it planned to sell the Times Daily newspaper of Florence, Alabama to a regional publisher.

Newspaper publishers are also contending with declining circulation as their readers move to the Internet, where most news is free.

(Reporting by S. John Tilak in Bangalore; Editing by David Holmes)