McClatchy’s woes go far beyond its balance sheet—the newspaper company has been staggering under the weight of lower revenue and a heavy cost structure—but today it took a small step toward better financial health by offering to exchange debt due starting in 2011 for new debt due 2014. The company said it can exchange about $350 milllion of its debt, buying itself a few more years on having to repay that chunk of loans. But even with that move, the company currently has almost $1.2 billion in debt on its books, which is a significant burden.

In addition to trying to get a handle on its enormous debt, McClatchy (NYSE: MNI) is also trying to address its slumping ad sales. The company unveiled a “five-point” strategy this week that involves, among other things, changing the way it sells classifieds. In a move that falls under the it’s-about-time department, McClatchy said it will now push classified primiarly through CareerBuilder rather than through its print papers. This comes three years after McClatchy acquired a stake in CareerBuilder as part of its purchase of Knight Ridder and long after Craigslist and other online competition began eating away at print classifieds revenue.

The company’s new ad-sales plan also involves paying sales commissions to ad agencies—like broadcasters do—and shifting emphasis on classifieds from print to its newspaper websites, McClatchy’s SacBee reported. And in cooperation with the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium, McClatchy will offer “rate incentives” to advertisers to encourage them to purchase ad inventory more regularly. The commission sales arrangement with ad agencies is designed to “level the playing field” with broadcasters, McClatchy Chairman and CEO Gary Pruitt said at the company’s annual shareholders conference.