Times Layoffs

From Politico:

In the news business, no one is safe - not even senior editors at The New York Times.

The media business was shaken on Friday when it was reported, first in New York Magazine and confirmed by POLITICO, that managing editor John Geddes, assistant managing editors Jim Roberts and Susan Edgerly, former Washington editor Rick Berke, and former Times Magazine editor Jerry Mazorati could all be casualties of the Times’ effort to cut costs.

“It is hard to imagine there are too many sacred cows left in any newsroom, given the general state of our industry,” Raju Narisetti, the head of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network and a former Washington Post managing editor, told POLITICO, without specifically responding to the New York Times cuts but talking about ongoing cost cutting efforts across American newsrooms.

The Times underwent a round of buyouts and layoffs in 2009, but the possible departure of high-level Times staffers signals just how dire the current state of news media is.

...

Abramson also sought to temper some of the hype and the rumors. “We had buyouts and layoffs in 2009. These are not different,” Abramson told POLITICO Friday afternoon.

But sources at the paper, who spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity, said this time feels different.

“Whatever sense of invincibility that Times employees still feel after the earlier rounds of cuts is being chipped away in this round,” said one Times guild member, who is not affected by the latest round of cuts.

 

When do they dump one of their excessively paid columnists because the neo-liberal crap he writes is interchangeable from the neo-liberal crap their other excessively paid columnists write?

Bet they could save some money by sending Bobo out to pasture or Kristof off to his inevitable future at the Gates Foundation or Friedman to, well, wherever the hell Friedman might go.

I wish I could muster some sympathy for the editors and journalists about to be made redundant, but given how so many of them seem to think the best way to improve education is to fire teachers and lots of them, it's awfully hard to do that.
 

Wouldn't it be nice if all these layoffs and firings gave our elite journalists and news editors and columnists some new perspective on school closures and teacher firings and the like?

I think it would.

But that won't ever happen.

In fact, the more layoffs and firings of journalists, editors and columnists you have, the more likely these people are to want to give the Murdochs and Bloombergs of the world the kind of corporate-friendly journalism that just might get them another high paying gig.