NYT: We're cutting
100 newsroom jobs
First come voluntary buyouts, then layoffs
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Oct 20, 2009
The country's biggest newsroom is about to get smaller.
The New York Times said yesterday that it will eliminate 100 newsroom employees by year's end, offering voluntary buyouts first and resorting to layoffs if needed.
The cuts represent about 8 percent of the 1,250 newsroom employees at the paper. To put that in perspective, the Washington Post has 700 newsroom employees and the Los Angeles Times has 600, so the NYT will remain by far the largest metropolitan daily news staff.
The cuts are similar to those instituted in spring 2008, when the Times made its first newsroom layoffs in recent memory after voluntary buyouts failed to produce the necessary number of cuts.
Already this year the paper had enacted pay cuts for some employees in an attempt to save money. More cuts may be made in other areas of the paper, including the business and op-ed sides, though none were specified yesterday.
The job losses were announced in a memo to the newsroom from executive editor Bill Keller, who wrote, "Like you, I yearn for the day when we do our jobs without looking over our shoulders for economic thunderstorms."
That day still seems pretty far out. Though the most recent round of quarterly results reported by newspaper companies, including Gannett and McClatchy, indicate that ad revenue declines are starting to level off, that level is still alarming. During the first half of the year, newspaper ad revenue declined almost 29 percent.
That has forced papers to make up for the losses in some way. In addition to cutting staff, papers are also considering charging for their web content.
At the same time, circulation for newspapers has been falling at a rapid pace. The Audit Bureau of Circulations numbers due out Monday are expected to show another steep decline for metro papers across the country.
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