NY Times to axe newsroom jobs, management cuts next year
By Erina Lin, Thursday 29 November 2007 at 23:28 :: Labor & Employment :: #932 :: rss
Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, announced in a staff memo Tuesday that “there are going to be layoffs in the newsroom, for the first time in recent memory.”
He also stated that “a hiring freeze will continue, with open positions filled internally, and next year we also expect to eliminate a few management jobs in administrative areas.”
For now, a dozen of newsroom workers will be axed, but Keller noted the paper has still been able to avoid “the kind of drastic staff cutbacks other news organisations have endured.”
Keller pointed out that tightening spending in the newsroom is essential to help the company meet the difficult financial challenges facing the industry. “While we are committed to retaining our competitive muscle, we will be facing some tough choices about where to save,” he added, according to Editor & Publisher.
“Today we notified the Newspaper Guild that about a dozen support positions within the newspaper are being eliminated. We will, for example, be closing the Recording Room as well as trimming a number of clerical and secretarial jobs. The people in those jobs will receive the severance they are entitled under the Guild contract,” E&P reported.
"As we move into 2008, we will be rethinking coverage priorities and how we use our space and our people, but always in ways that preserve what The Times does best. In the future, as in the past few months while these matters were under review, we have worked closely with our partners on the business side, with a single shared ambition: to seek cutbacks and reductions that are as strategically focused as possible, and do nothing to damage our core journalism," Keller concluded in the memo.
Comments
No comment.
Post comment