Posted on 03/10/2006 8:28:15 AM PST by abb
NEW YORK The Washington Post plans to cut at least 80 newsroom jobs through attrition and buyouts, according to sources at the paper who said editors began giving staffers the bad news on Thursday in meetings and will continue today.
"My understanding is that the editors and managing editors brought this up with other issues of downsizing, but with no layoffs," said one source in the metro staff, which got first word of the news in a meeting Thursday. "It looks like through attrition and buyouts."
Another source in the national staff said a meeting was being held this morning to give them the bad news, with similar gatherings throughout the day. "Eighty through attrition and buyouts," the source said. "They are going staff by staff."
The paper has about 800 editorial employees, many represented by the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. Rick Weiss, a Post reporter and Guild unit chair at the paper, could not be reached for comment this morning.
Other cost cuts also are being rumored, including the eventual closing of at least two foreign bureaus and changes to some other overseas bureaus that would have staffers working out of their homes.
Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. and Publisher Bo Jones did not return calls seeking comment.
Post spokesman Eric Grant offered no comment when asked about the pending cuts or any official announcement, saying only, "not at this point." Joe Strupp (jstrupp@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor at E&P.
WTF? All those employees and they still suck.
They could fire fact checkers to no effect.
Oh come on, that's not fair ... actually, yes, there IS a market out there for the Liberal media. Sure, it's a teenie tiny widdle market, but I'm sure it exists ... somewhere.
I hope some activists go over there and stage a demonstration---of joy. :)
You know when a private company cuts jobs they go to town on them and why they should have "cut other things instead of jobs or the executives should give up there pay first" or some *hit like that. Have any of the big boy's at the post given up there pay packages yet?
Put the roles in reverse, if this had been a conservative newspaper you can darn well bet on some slimy reaction by the left. Maybe we can have our own obnoxious group like that "Baptist Pastor" who demonstrates at soldiers funerals and ALWAYS gets media attention.
Picket and parade in front of Wapo offices with signs made up with all the fun dino cartoons up above. Or, "Wapo's approval level at record low according to recent poll taken by American consumers!" We need to spotlight this good news.
Really good news for a Friday. Maybe next month the WPo will cut some administrative top heaviness. Then maybe they will just go out of business. We can hope can't we?
The NYT, WaPo, LAT, Glob, etc could all be pinted with blank mastheads. Then they could use those stickylabels for whichever city they were sent to...
Let's hope that among those fired is the editor who wrote the "Bush knew about the levees breaching" hit piece, then hid the correction on page A-16. But I suppose bias and incompetence are not grounds for dismissal in the MSM.
Great synopsis! Ain't life grand?
Does that mean they fired MD4BUSH????
Yes it will amount to something, but it's bad news:
Less reporting, more forwarding of Press Releases and Al Reuters.
If it weren't for the persistant biases, the Washington Post would be an excellent newspaper. (Big "if"). This will cause it to decline in quality.
how many of those starry-eyed (unemployed) lefties are gonna wind up doing their own blogs?
Can we tap for oil in them once there dead.
More good news!
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