NY Times To Slash Jobs, But Not The Ones That Matter
Trying to stem its financial decline, the media giant is shrinking the size of the paper (literally!):
The New York Times Co. plans to reduce the width of its flagship newspaper by an inch and a half and close a printing plant in Edison, N.J., resulting in the loss of about 250 jobs, the company announced Tuesday.
The reduction in width will bring the paper’s size in line with what is becoming an industry standard. USA Today, the nation’s largest-selling daily, already prints on the smaller size, and Dow Jones & Co.’s Wall Street Journal, the No. 2-selling daily, is moving to the smaller size early next year.
The changes at The New York Times will go into effect by the second quarter of 2008, the company said in a statement early Tuesday, and will save about $42 million a year. The job cuts account for about one-third of the Times’ total production work force of 800.
Here’s a real cost-cutting move: get rid of Bill Keller, Gail Collins, Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, and Maureen Dowd – it will probably only lop off a couple of million from the payroll, but the paper’s circulation would increase substantially – the liberal hardcore is not going anywhere, after all, and some conservatives and moderates who respect the paper’s storied history but lament the current hostile environment would no doubt return.
To be clear, I WANT the paper to do well; it really is an institution; I wouldn’t hound it so much if I didn’t wish for a return to form. I’m not asking it to become the Washington Times, either – the Washington Post has shown that it’s possible to be liberal and fairminded and smart…
“The NY Times announces that its print edition will be 1.5″ narrower and a printing plant in NJ will be closed. With this change, a total of 1050 jobs will be lost….”
Executive editor Bill Keller said at a quarterly meeting, “It’s painful to watch an industry retrench. But this is a much less painful way to go about assuring our economic survival than cutting staff..”
Or, at least, cutting anyone of any real importance.
http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2006/07/18/ny_times_to_get.php
Keller and the kooks on the editorial board will be the last ones to go, right before Pinch himself. It would take a mutiny to rescue the Gray Lady from its management.
Am I to understand that the nyt would execute cutting expenditure at the expense of health care and jobs?
Never ever want to hear a peep from them about the gop reducing the federal budget at the expense of others.
would love to see their list of mangement salaries and what they pay their underqualifed editorial staff. (Worth noting the complete lack of anyone with gravitas to defend their decision to publish the swift story. It would look so bad, that they didn’t even bother to try. Keller to the rescue once, but not again-he won’t survive another hit like the one he took.)
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There may be compelling logistical reasons for the reduction but some magical cost saver it cannot be. I suspect its announcement is merely to divert some attention to what would otherwise be only a declaration of layoffs and plant closings. The NYT will never again be the peak of the media mountain, as it was for so long and that is not a good thing, it is a Great Thing. All the perpetual abuses of their privileges, real and imagined must stop or at least stop commanding so much undeserved attention. Rich, Dowd and Krugman should embarass any modestly educated adult. They are fools and fantasists. Always, there is this declaration of their great talent even from those who make destroying their “arguments” their days sport. Well, there is precious little evidence of even literary talent from this crowd. So off with the head of the Grey Lady and long LONG overdue.
Just becuase they stab the bullfighters, does not make them bullfighters.
let us say it The NYT is failing. Why? By ceasing to be waht made it the newspaper of record.
It has become a political rag sheet for whatever gregs of humanity can proudly pose as Anti-American. Pinch is an idiot son of a millionaire palced in charge of the fammily business, and it destrouying it before our eyes as he commits treason but protecterd by his position.
That is why Teddy was appointed to the Senate. It was absolutely imperative to not let the idiot son anywhere near the family businesses and source of its fortune.
If the Sculzberger family had a half a brain, they wold thank him for his service, and excuse him to go to say Monoco, and contemplate female pulchritude on a Riviera beach somewhere.
I think they were just too shortsighted.
Personally, I would have hit the internet hard-wikipedia beat them to an invaluable tool-which I have no doubt the NYT could have done better and found a means of charging a subscription.
I still think that where the the NYT(et al) is blowing it is by not using the advantages of the medium of the interent provides. Pictures, graphs, diagrams-but especially pictures-are all the things that were limited by print media-now when they have to opportunity to employ photographers around the world and transfer the images spontaneously, the still run a black and white print form.
Blogs are chewing up the world of words, but given the resources that the nyt has, you’d think you’d read a story with the best pictures. They are avoiding the work they have to do.
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