The New York Times reports today that the paper will cut 8 percent of its newsroom staff, or around 100 people by the end of 2009. Currently, the New York Times employs 1,250 staff members in the news department. The media company is planning to offer buyouts to both union and non-union staff and will need to implement layoffs if they can’t get enough people to participate in the buyout offer. The cuts have been added to the TechCruch Layoff Tracker.
The paper made cuts to its news staff in the spring of 2008, eliminating 100 jobs. The Times adds that shortly after this round of layoffs, the paper created jobs, making the reduction smaller than this year’s cut. According to the report, the Times mails buyout packages to the entire newsroom staff (yes, all 1,225 employees), and then the staff has 45 days to apply or reject the buyout. Under Newspaper Guild terms, buyouts offer participants two weeks’ salary for each year they are employed by the paper.
Earlier this year, The New York Times laid off 100 employees in its business operations group. At that time, the paper also implemented pay cuts for most of the employees and executive editor Bill Keller warned of layoffs in the newsroom if the Newspaper Guild did not agree to the cuts.
Not a surprise – it’s too liberal.
yep.
In other news the Obama has just announced 100 job openings
NIXLE, http://www.nixle.com
Newspapers are laying people off because the market is changing. It’s the same all across the board–LA Times, Chicago Tribune, etc– all have seen lower revenue, resulting in higher job losses.
The world is moving online and it’s moving “hyperlocal.” One company has seen this shift well in advance and has made large strides in the direction of filling the gap between old school news moguls and individual, tech-savvy journalists, sending in stories from their cell phones. This company is called NIXLE and can be found here:
http://www.nixle.com
They’ve captured the public safety sector across the United States as primary publishers, this will allow them to build a foundation of information that will be the core of Nixle throughout the world.
Keep an eye out, get involved.
Yours,
NixleRep
NixleRep@gmail.com
Well, now blogs will control the media! Hooray!
oh no NO MORE ZOMBIE BLOGGERS PLEASE KTHXBYE
It’s a sign of the times when one of the best companies in publishing has to reduce their news staff. Newspapers need to move quicker to online platforms and dominate news online to survive.
I smell a bailout.
Newspapers, especially prominent ones like NYT, are important for investigative reporting and we need them. There is no clear or effective business model yet for traditional media.
do you think bloggers are the answer to news? global and national level?
I think the New York Times is in trouble for 2 main reasons:
1)
They are to liberal.
Report the news and ask the hard questions. Stop telling us what the news is and let us judge what it is AFTER you give us the facts. And for God sakes, stop throwing softball questions.
This is the problem with most media now-a-day anyway. Everybody seems to have an agenda.
2)
No online strategy.
Online should be used as a database or knowledge base for news, reports, opinion and so forth. Treat it as an educational tool for the masses to search and research through. Dig deep into issues and let it stay online for future use.
The New York Times should be the LexusNexus of news data online. It should be the Google of news and the Wordpress of blogs for journalists.
It should be a place where people can get more info on stories that was printed the day before. It should be the place where you read the paper and it has a overview of what happened online the night before and sort out all the data and info published online.
———
I used to love the New York Times… but they are too political and preachy now.
Break the business model and focus on being a resource of information and education. Stop telling us the news and what we should think; just report the facts and ask the hard questions no matter who side they are on.
There are only a few papers on par with the quality and investigative reporting that the NYT has (WSJ being another one).
All the blogs are just stop gap measures that bring speed but not the depth and quality that real newspapers bring.
I read blogs for entertainment and a little information.
I read NYT and WSJ for insightful thinking, in-depth investigations and quality reporting.
By becoming an explicit supporter of the current administration, they NYT helped retain a highly supportive group of their total readership. However, any hope of expanding readership also was eliminated by so glaringly taking sides over the past 2+ years.