The New York Times reports today that the paper will cut 8 percent of its newsroom staff, or around 100 people by the end of 2009. Currently, the New York Times employs 1,250 staff members in the news department. The media company is planning to offer buyouts to both union and non-union staff and will need to implement layoffs if they can’t get enough people to participate in the buyout offer. The cuts have been added to the TechCruch Layoff Tracker.
The paper made cuts to its news staff in the spring of 2008, eliminating 100 jobs. The Times adds that shortly after this round of layoffs, the paper created jobs, making the reduction smaller than this year’s cut. According to the report, the Times mails buyout packages to the entire newsroom staff (yes, all 1,225 employees), and then the staff has 45 days to apply or reject the buyout. Under Newspaper Guild terms, buyouts offer participants two weeks’ salary for each year they are employed by the paper.
Earlier this year, The New York Times laid off 100 employees in its business operations group. At that time, the paper also implemented pay cuts for most of the employees and executive editor Bill Keller warned of layoffs in the newsroom if the Newspaper Guild did not agree to the cuts.