A deep slump in advertising sales that has battered many media companies is showing signs of easing, Richmond-based Media General Inc. said yesterday after posting a third-quarter loss. The company, which owns the Richmond Times-Dispatch, took an $84 million noncash write-down on the value of some assets. That contributed to a loss of $62.5 million, or $2.80 per share, for the third quarter, compared with a profit of $6.1 million, or 27 cents, in the same period last year.

Virginia Business magazine has been acquired by an investment group that includes Bernard A. Niemeier, the magazine’s president and publisher. Richmond-based Media General Inc. completed the sale of the monthly publication yesterday to Virginia Business Publications LLC, a newly formed company. Terms were not disclosed. Media General, the parent company of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, started Virginia Business magazine in 1986.

A veteran Richmond Times-Dispatch staffer has been named to lead the local Web portal Richmond.com. Rick Thornton, an editor for The Times-Dispatch from 1994 to 2007, starts immediately as manager of Richmond.com. The site focuses on the local social scene, including entertainment and events, but its goal is to be the go-to, interactive site for residents seeking to make connections with various communities of interest. Thornton’s title is “chief connector.“

Altria Group Inc., the largest U.S. tobacco company, said second-quarter profit rose 8.6 percent after price increases. The Henrico County-based maker of Marlboro cigarettes also raised its full-year forecast. Net income increased to $1.01 billion, or 49 cents a share, from $930 million, or 45 cents, a year earlier. Excluding items, adjusted earnings were 50 cents a share, beating the analysts’ estimates of 47 cents.

Investor Mario J. Gabelli has increased his stake in Media General Inc. to nearly 30 percent of the Richmond-based company’s Class A shares. Gabelli’s investment firm, New York-based GAMCO Investors, and other funds it controls now own more than 6.6 million shares, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week.

Media General Inc., the Richmond-based company that owns the Richmond Times-Dispatch, has made the following appointments:

• Dan Bradley has been promoted to vice president and general manager of WCMH-TV, the company’s NBC affiliate in Columbus, Ohio, effective tomorrow. He moved to Columbus in April to become the station’s director of digital journalism and content. He was vice president of news for Media General’s broadcast division from 2001 to April. He is a graduate of the University of Toledo and attended Ohio State University.

H.Graham Woodlief Jr.‘s first taste of the newspaper business came when he was 12 years old. He got a job delivering newspapers in Richmond’s Museum District, where he grew up. “I carried both The Times-Dispatch and the News Leader,“ Woodlief said. “I had different routes at different times.“ A painting in his office at the Media General Inc. headquarters in Richmond depicts what that first job was like, with two boys trudging through ankle-deep snow in the Fan on a newspaper route. “I carried newspapers in snow like that,“ he recalled.

Media General Inc. has named group leaders for five geographic areas in Virginia as the company shifts its corporate management to a market-based structure. In March, the Richmond-based company, which owns the Richmond Times-Dispatch, announced it would move its management structure away from the traditional divisions of print, broadcasting and interactive media to a market-focused structure, as part of a strategy to streamline content and generate additional revenue across multiple media platforms.

Tough economic conditions have pushed Media General Inc. to adapt more quickly to the major changes affecting media companies, executives said yesterday at the Richmond-based company’s annual shareholders meeting. “The economic downturn, in many ways, has inspired us to accelerate our change,“ Marshall N. Morton, Media General’s president and chief executive officer, told shareholders at the meeting, held at the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s production plant in Hanover County.

Richmond-based Media General Inc. yesterday reported a wider first-quarter loss as advertising sales continued to falter in the economic downturn. Media General, which owns the Richmond Times-Dispatch, reported a loss of $21.3 million, or 96 cents per share, compared with a loss of $20.3 million, or 92 cents per share, in the first quarter of 2008. The recent results included severance expenses of $4.5 million, or 20 cents per share.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch laid off 59 employees yesterday as it responds to a sharp decline in advertising revenue that has affected newspapers across the country. The layoffs, along with the elimination of 31 open positions, affected most of the newspapers’ departments, including production, circulation, marketing, business, advertising, editorial, news, operations, facilities, prepress design services, and targeted solutions, a new-product development group.

Media General opened its window on Washington 30 years ago, three blocks from the White House. Last week, the recession closed it.

Media General Inc., the parent company of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, is shifting its organizational structure away from the traditional divisions of broadcasting, print and interactive media. Instead, the Richmond-based company is adopting a new corporate structure, effective July 1, that reorganizes its divisions into five geographic markets, including a Virginia/Tennessee market.

After 30 years in operation, Media General Inc.‘s Washington news bureau will close March 27. Media General, the parent company of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, said yesterday that the economic downturn and a sharp drop in advertising revenue are forcing it to close the office, which has provided news and feature stories for all of the company’s newspapers, television stations and Web sites since 1979.

MG board nominates one It skips 3 directors who were seated after proxy fight; new candidate heads consultancy Richmond-based Media General Inc.‘s board of directors has nominated one new candidate for the company’s board, but not three directors who were elected last year after a proxy battle. The company, which owns the Richmond Times-Dispatch, said yesterday that its board has nominated Scott D. Anthony, president of Innosight LLC, a consulting, training and investment firm based in Watertown, Mass, to serve as one of three board members elected by the company’s Class A shareholders. Votes will be tallied at the company’s annual shareholders meeting, scheduled for April 23.