New York Times Offers Buyouts in Effort to Shrink Newsroom

The New York Times’ roughly 1,150-person newsroom is about to get smaller, the paper announced in article published this morning.

In a letter to the staff, Times executive editor Jill Abramson announced she is “seeking 30 managers who are not union members to accept
buyout packages.”

“There is no getting around the hard news that the size of the newsroom staff must be reduced,” Abramson says in the letter, according to the article published this morning.

The paper cites a “volatile” advertising climate as the reason for the need to trim the newsroom, and notes that the New York Times Company’s ad revenue shrank by 10.9 percent, according to the latest earnings report.

From the Times:

Employees have until Jan. 24 to accept a severance package. Ms. Abramson
pointed out in her note that the business side had cut its staff by
more than 60 percent in recent years. The company recently announced
that it was offering buyouts to 30 employees in the advertising
department. The newsroom had its most extensive cuts in 2008 when it
eliminated 100 jobs through buyouts and layoffs. Ms. Abramson urged
employees to consider “whether accepting a voluntary severance package
at this time in your life makes sense.”

If the voluntary buyouts don’t fix the paper’s money problems, Abramson says there will be layoffs.