Washington Post announces terms of newsroom buyouts; layoffs possible

The Washington Post released terms of previously announced employee buyouts Wednesday. Its new publisher Katharine Weymouth added that if there is no enough staff participated, layoffs were possible, The Post reported Thursday.

Last month the paper announced its buyout offers, or “voluntary early retirement incentive programmes,” to its employees to reduce costs. The plan just released targets employees who aren’t eligible to be members of the Newspaper Guild, typically editors and other managers.

A similar plan for guild-covered staff members, including reporters, has been promised soon, The Washington Post reported.

To qualify in the plan, employees must be at least 50 years old and have five years of Post service. “More than 100 of The Post’s approximately 785 newsroom employees will be eligible,” management stated, according to the article.

However, “buyout offers will not be extended to everyone with the right age and service,” wrote Weymouth in an e-mail to the staff. “Although we would like to be able to offer the (buyouts) to all who might be interested, they are being offered only in areas where positions do not need to be replaced or where we can otherwise achieve cost savings,” she added, according to The Washington Post article posted by MediaInfoCenter.

In recent years, due to serious decline in circulation and ad revenue, the newspaper industry has been in rapid contraction. The New York Times last month announced its buyouts to cut 100 newsroom positions, adding that layoffs would still be possible if the number were not met.

“We have more readers now, more far flung readers, than we have ever had, and on-line revenues are growing. But, as you know, they are not yet growing fast enough to offset the declines we are seeing in print revenues,” Weymouth said, according to The Post.