NYT Cuts 100 Jobs

Sad times, my friends… sad times.

In what appears to be a replay of last year, The New York Times will again be cutting 100 newsroom positions by the end of the year. Executive Editor Bill Keller broke the news to staff today. The paper is offering voluntary buyouts to all staff effective Thursday. If they don’t reach critical mass, management will be forced to resort to layoffs. “I hope that won’t happen, but it might,” Keller wrote. Budget cuts are also imminent for the editorial, op-ed, and business staff. The paper was already surviving on slimmed-down production costs, and staff had been dealt a mandatory 5 percent pay cut earlier in the year. Today’s blow, Keller admits, has come sooner than expected. Despite the cuts, The New York Times will still remain the largest newsroom in the country. But who knows how much of the storm its journalists can weather. “Like you,” Keller wrote, “I yearn for the day when we can do our jobs without looking over our shoulders for economic thunderstorms.” (Reuters)

This needs to stop. I know there are no easy answers on how to do it, but every time a story like this hits the public, they lose more faith in newspapers and news in general. We need to make some radical changes, and soon, or we’re going to see a time when that faith will be shattered all together… I don’t want to see that time.