The New York Times plans to eliminate 100 newsroom jobs — about 8 percent of the total — by year’s end, offering buyouts to union and nonunion employees, and resorting to layoffs if it cannot get enough people to leave voluntarily, the paper announced on Monday.
The program mirrors one carried out in the spring of 2008, when the paper erased 100 positions in its newsroom, though other jobs were created, so the net reduction was smaller. That round of cuts included some layoffs of journalists — about 15 to 20, though The Times would not disclose the actual figure — which was the first time in memory such a layoff had happened.
Times executives said this year that they did not anticipate — but would not rule out — the news staff shrinking in 2009, except through attrition. In fact, when employees took a 5 percent pay cut for most of this year, it was meant to forestall any staff reductions. But hopes for a year-end turnaround in the newspaper business have faded.
BNO News posted NYT executive editor Bill Keller's memo to staff.
Funny, it seems like only Friday when Guardian columnist Roy Greenslade was talking about signs of life in British and American newspaper publishers.