The Whistle

Of the Headsman's Ax.

From the Huffington Post

New York Times Layoffs Update: 15 Newsroom Staffers Get The Ax

The New York Post's Keith Kelly reports that the New York Times wielded the ax yesterday, laying off 15 involuntary staffers after not enough people accepted voluntary buyout offers:

The New York Times is laying off 15 journalists after the company acknowledged it fell short of its goal of getting 100 people to take voluntary buyout packages.

The axing is the first-ever mass firing of journalists in the paper's 157-year history.
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Insiders said the business and national desks were spared, while the metro desk, particularly its suburban bureaus, were hit.

Read the entire New York Post article here or read Executive Editor Bill Keller's memo to staff below, courtesy of the New York Observer Media Mob:

Colleagues:


A little over two months ago, I told you that we would have to reduce staff within the newsroom by roughly 100 jobs given the difficult financial challenges facing our business and the deteriorating national economy.


Our hope, as you know, was that we could trim our payroll by encouraging enough volunteers to accept buyout offers. While the overwhelming majority of our reductions did indeed come from volunteers, we have been forced to resort to a relatively small numbers of layoffs to meet our assigned goal. (We are not going to discuss numbers or the details of the staff reduction, nor will we be releasing a list of names.) All of those who are leaving will do so with a financial cushion that should carry them to other endeavors or to retirement, but that will not eliminate their sense of loss, or ours.

…

Yadda yadda yadda.

Having been through firings and layoffs and buyouts (oh my!), I can attest to the fact that it is a hear-sickening time; outside of divorce and death, nothing can blow such a massive, ragged hole in a person’s sense of identity and self-worth as getting fired from a hard-won, professional position, especially in hard times and with no place to land.

Suddenly you are in enemy territory, under-armored and far from safety. Suddenly everything you thought was secure is at risk, and everything you thought was enduring starts looking terribly brittle and paper-thin.

So when I read this piece, I could not help but notice that while the NYT cries poor-mouth and gives members of the working press their walking papers for the first time in 157 years, not one of Gotham’s most notorious Neocon stooges and hacks (who, for reasons that passeth all understanding, the Gray Lady keeps ferociously cuddled and coddled in her lavish bosom) --

Not The Piddler



Not The Mad Flatter




Not even The Fucker

-- will be hearing the whistle of the headsman’s axe.

UPDATE: Apparently there is one more, late-breaking NYT layoff:

"Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, and his wife, Gail Gregg, have decided to separate, they said in a statement issued Friday. Mr. Sulzberger, 56, who is also publisher of The Times, and Ms. Gregg, also 56 and a painter and writer, said the decision to end their marriage was amicable."

I wonder how many copy-boy's and -girl's salaries that early retirement package is going cost?

As of this writing, however, The Piddler, The Mad Flatter and The Fucker are all still safely ensconced in their lavish sleeper cars aboard Pinch Sulzberger's Neocon gravy-train.
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