Layoffs and buyouts at The Seattle Times

The timing couldn't be better. Merry Christmas everyone!

Jim Romenesko has the company e-mail:

Here's an article from The Stranger that says the newsroom budget will be cut by 6%, whatever that means.

 

Wouldn't it just be newspaper perfect to be told your job was "mission critical" and get denied, then a few weeks later get laid off anyway?

 

Sports hired two fairly high-salaried employees this summer...Bud Wither's replacement and a columnist replacement for Jerry Brewer.

 

And Matt Pentz has hardly been well received locally

 

What is the existing circulation? The approximate newsroom staffing?

 

In other NW newspaper news - the publisher The Eugene Register-Guard hired away from the Oregonian last summer is gone.

In holiday bonus news (Gannett edition) TEGNA employees (TV) get $400 for a bonus. Gannett (newspaper) people get an extra paid day off (which will come in handy when the furloughs are announced).

 

I guess the news makes the timing of this column kinda funny. Not haha funny, the other kind.
Why newspapers matter, still

As for what DanOregon mentioned, a couple of links:
R-G parts ways with Editor and Publisher N. Christian Anderson? | eugeneweekly.com
Former <i>Oregonian</i> Publisher Out as Editor and Publisher at Eugene <i>Register Guard</i> - Willamette Week

 

Class move for a newspaper asking another paper to out a source.

 

The second article I linked counted 202 newsroom employees, but that's just going off of the staff listed on their website.

 

I went looking for this thread and didn't realize I had created it.

Anyway, it's the holiday season so that means more buyouts and layoffs, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal link there. They don't know how many positions they're cutting, but it'll be more than last year. Their current staff is at 178.

 

That number seems somewhat robust for a 2016 newsroom not named The New York Times.

I know our once-370 staff was at 128 in South Florida when I left in 2011.

 

Thirteen weeks of severance max. Pathetic. And I thought getting 26 weeks after 36 years was a little weak. Guess I should have been more grateful.