From New York Times NYT: Aiming to cut costs in an
increasingly troubled advertising environment, The New York Times
announced on Monday morning that it would offer buyout packages
to newsroom employees. While the primary goal of the buyout
program is to trim highly paid managers from its books, the
company is offering some reporters and editors in the newsroom
the chance to volunteer for buyout packages as well.
In a letter to the staff, Jill Abramson, executive editor of
The Times, said she was seeking 30 managers who are not union
members to accept buyout packages. She stressed that the paper
had been reducing as many newsroom expenses as possible, like
leases on foreign and national bureaus. But the hiring The Times
has done in recent years to help make it more competitive online
has restored the newsroom to the same size it was in 2003 - about
1,150 people.
"There is no getting around the hard news that the size of the newsroom staff must be reduced," Ms. Abramson said in the
letter.
Employees must decide by Jan. 24 whether to accept a
severance package. Ms. Abramson pointed out in her note that the
business side had cut its staff by more than 60 percent in recent
years. The company recently announced that it was offering
buyouts to 30 employees in the advertising department. The
newsroom had its most extensive cuts in 2008 when it eliminated
100 jobs through buyouts and layoffs. Ms. Abramson urged
employees to consider "whether accepting a voluntary severance
package at this time in your life makes sense."
She added: "I hope the needed savings can be achieved
through voluntary buyouts but if not, I will be forced to go to
layoffs among the excluded staff."
These buyouts are not being offered to members of the
editorial department. Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page
editor, wrote in a note that "we, too, have made reductions to
our expenses to meet our share of this burden, but we are not
going to be offering buyouts in the Editorial Department at this
time."
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