Publisher Arnoldo Mondadori Editore SpA said on Thursday it saw no quick end to a slump in advertising which more than halved nine-month net profit and announced plans to cut its Italian staff by a fifth.

More than 600 jobs in Italy will go in 2008-2011, according to slides for an analyst presentation by the publisher of woman's magazine Grazia and weekly Panorama. This includes 120 journalists.

Shares in Mondadori, controlled by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's holding company Fininvest [FIN.UL], pared losses and at 1548 GMT were down 0.98 percent at 3.28 euros. The DJ Stoxx index of media companies .SXMP was up about 0.8 percent.

The company said advertising will fall significantly until the end of 2009, although the rate of decline slowed in the third quarter, mirroring trends reported by other publishers.

British newspaper group Trinity Mirror Plc said on Thursday the rate of decline in revenues continued to slow and said it should meet expectations for 2009. Its shares were up more than 6 percent.

Mondadori's nine-month net profit fell 53.9 percent to 27.1 million euros ($40.6 million). Lower advertising in Italy and France and a decline in circulation led to an 18.6 percent drop in revenues to 1.114 billion euros.

It said it expected a significant reduction in 2009 operating profits compared with a year earlier.

Core earnings, or EBITDA, more than halved to 28 million euros in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, weighed down by restructuring costs, and missing a Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S consensus estimate of 40.4 million euros.

(Editing by David Cowell)

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