'New York Times' Goes Buyout Route

As you may have already read, the New York Times will be cutting 100 jobs from its newsroom. In a memo to staff (here reproduced by the New York Observer's John Koblin), Bill Keller wrote, "We hope to accomplish this by offering voluntary buyouts. On Thursday, the Company will be sending buyout offers to everyone in the newsroom. Getting a buyout package does NOT mean we want you to leave. It is simply easier to send the envelopes to everyone. If you think a buyout may be right for you, you have up to 45 days to decide whether you will accept it or not." Names of the departed should begin trickling out mid-December.

Aside from saving money on envelopes—everyone in the paper's 1,250 person newsroom gets the packet?—readers of the Times' Media Decoder blog made their own suggestions for how to save money and avoid further cuts in in 465 comments on a post from Richard Pérez-Peña.

"Well, there is a solution to layoffs—start charging for on-line content, I’d pay…. Seriously," wrote one reader named Eric. Another named Alex was more adamant: "SHUT OFF your website. Stop giving the news away for free. If you have to go down into the dust, at least do so fighting all the way."

Someone named Ralphie had an unusual idea: "[I] cant afford a subscription really. So I’d go to CNN, even though their news sucks. Solution: go with a broadcast model, niche marketing and social networks. Newspaper reporters need to learn to moderate storytime for the kids, right? Read me a story."

Another reader named Molly Priddy suggested a hard look at the company's c-suites: "I bet a couple of the journalists salaries are lesser than or equal to the salary of one 'executive' official who does not contribute to the actual journalism. How do you expect to keep a fresh, marketable product if you fire the people who make it happen?"

In March, paidContent's Rafat Ali sifted through the Times Company's proxy filing with the SEC and found that Times Chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. will earn $1.09 million this year and CEO Janet L. Robinson will make $1 million. According to Ali, those salaries have remained the same since 2006.

The same day those buyout envelopes are sent to employees, the New York Times Company will be hosting its third quarter earnings call at 11 a.m. The company experienced an 11 percent rise in late September after Gannett teased better-than-expected earnings in an advance of its own call, which actually occurred yesterday.

As Dow Jones Newswire's Nat Worden reported yesterday, Gannett's profits fell 53 percent, but its operating expenses were also down 14 percent. That was enough for Gannett Chairman, President and CEO Craig Dubow to boast, "We see revenue trends moving in the right direction in our publishing segment."

We'll see how the Times Company is trending in a few days.