Memo: Times expects to layoff

The New York Observer reports The New York Times assistant managing editor Bill Schmidt sent out a memo this week which said layoffs should be expected as voluntary buyout target is not reached.

An excerpt from the memo:

About six weeks ago Bill Keller announced that the newsroom would need to reduce its head count by about 100 jobs, as a result of the worsening financial picture facing this newspaper and the rest of our industry. To that end, we put on the table a round of buyouts, and began seeking volunteers among both our Guild and excluded employees.

The window for those voluntary buyouts closes officially next week -- on Monday, April 21, for excluded members of the staff, and on that day and the next (Tuesday, April 22), for Guild applicants.

While we will not know the hard count until that time, every effort to handicap the outcome suggests that we are almost certain to fall short of the number of volunteers we will need. If that is indeed the case, as we expect it will be, we will -- regrettably -- be forced resort to some limited number of layoffs within the core newsroom.

}}} full story {{{
.