With rather strange timing, a New York Times Co. announcement of further reduction of its newsroom staff came three days after it debuted its San Francisco Bay Area edition, notes Grumpy Editor.
Executive Editor Bill Keller said The Times plans to eliminate 100 editorial jobs by year’s end. That would leave about 1,150 newsroom positions, down from about 1,330 at the news department’s peak in spring, 2008, before a prior round of cuts.
Earlier, the “newspaper of record” made deep reductions in other, non-newsroom departments, where layoffs have occurred several times.
Staffers, who earlier took a 5 percent pay cut for most of this year, weren't the only ones being hit. The Times already lowered the budget for freelancers and trimmed other expenses.
Stockholders, too, have felt the ripples. To cope with revenue declines, The Times suspended its dividend in February for the first time in four decades as a publicly-traded company.
Yet, with all the slicing, The Times last Friday unveiled its San Francisco Bay Area edition with local content that included a dining and wine section that focused on the importance of wine lists. It also lured two Northern California writers as columnists and ran local stories that included a profile of the Oakland police chief.
The effort, from a 10-person San Francisco bureau, is aimed at the affluent population segment and newcomers to the area along with hopes of siphoning readers from local newspapers.
If it works, The Times has its eyes on a similar local edition for Chicago and, later, in other key areas around the country.
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