NY Times Cuts 500 Jobs
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in MediaThe old guard is hurtin’ for certain.
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Times Co. said Tuesday it would cut about 500 jobs, or about 4 percent of its work force, as part of an ongoing effort to reduce costs. The reductions come atop another 200 jobs that were cut earlier this year.The Times said it expected 250 jobs at its main newspaper group to be affected, which includes the Times, the International Herald Tribune and the online operation of the Times. Of those job cuts, about 45 will come from the Times’ newsroom, the company said in a statement.
Another 160 jobs will be cut from the Times’ New England operation, which includes The Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Boston.com. The company did not provide a breakdown of those job cuts other than to say that 35 newsroom jobs would be cut at The Boston Globe.
But they aren’t the only ones.
The announcement came on the same day that The Philadelphia Inquirer and its sister newspaper said they would eliminate a combined 100 newsroom jobs because of lower circulation and revenue. The Inquirer plans to cut its editorial staff by 15 percent from 500 to 425, while the Philadelphia Daily News will cut its editorial staff 19 percent, from 130 to 105.[...]
Last week, Knight Ridder said its third-quarter earnings would fall about 20 percent because of declining ad sales, as well as higher interest expense and newsprint costs.
Knight Ridder cited weakness in its Philadelphia — one if its biggest newspaper markets — as well as Fort Worth, Texas and Kansas City as leading factors behind the profit decline.
Kansas City? Uh-oh…that’s my city.
Listen, if these dailies go under (which is unlikely), that’s not going to be good for anybody. But maybe they could do a much better job of catching up to today’s reality. Perhaps getting rid of mandatory registration will help. I know the KC newspaper does this, and it’s annoying because I can’t really link to them and know that my readers will get to the content.
Open up your semi-walled gardens or suffer the consequences dailies!
More from WNBC.
(HT: Dan Gillmor)
UPDATE
And even more from Editor & Publisher.
In a memo to staffers, company chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. and CEO Janet Robinson wrote: “We regret that we will see many of our colleagues leave the Company; it is a painful process for all of us. We have been tested many times in our 154-year history as we are being tested now.” They promised this would not impact the quality of the paper’s journalism.
Won’t impact the quality? Color me skeptical.
Personally, I have a friend who’s working as a freelancer for the Times right now and has told me about people being laid off, in favor of part time help. The way he/she described it, these employees were toxic and most wanted to see them go.
I’ll talk with my friend and have a report for you later.
Who thought that the NY Times would have something in common with Wal-Mart…
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September 21st, 2005 at 3:20 am
The “Times” is a very, very strange place to work. I am sure a lot of the people who are being let go have literally devoted their lives, and invested their sense of self-worth, in being “Times” reporters. This is more than a job loss to them; this is their worst nightmare.
There are few other institutions I can think of that so clearly represent the “pinnacle” of their profession. There are many great hospitals, many great sports teams. But journalism in this country is pretty much a single track, and at the top of the hill is 43rd Street. Unfortunately for all the rest of us, that means a great many of the people who arrive there do so with a great deal of strangeness and ego, which can get in the way of reporting the news.
September 21st, 2005 at 7:27 am
[...] DONKLEPHANT OBSERVES: Listen, if these dailies go under (which is unlikely), that’s not going to be good for anybody. But maybe they could do a much better job of catching up to today’s reality. Perhaps getting rid of mandatory registration will help. I know the KC newspaper does this, and it’s annoying because I can’t really link to them and know that my readers will get to the content. [...]
September 21st, 2005 at 2:29 pm
Unfortunately, “today’s realities” are clashing with the timeless (pun intended) realities that a newspaper is a business. And with the Internet, you’re giving away content. And nobody makes money to keep a staff of writers by giving it away.
Internet ads just don’t do the trick the way print advertising does, for some reason (it’s not my expertise). And a print newspaper makes most of its profit from ads. The money from subscription and newsstand sales is a fraction of that, but it’s often the fraqction that makes a difference between red and black in the ledger books.
Subscription is a desperate attempt to channel the online readership better, the better to put ads in front of them that they’ll see and use.
It’s not pretty, but I can’t blame them for trying. Publishing a newspaper is famously the business of buying paper at $1 a ton and selling it at $3 a ton, or some such cliche. How do you squeeze that extra $2 a ton out of the Internet?