Feb 15 2008
Decimate
In the Roman Empire, the punishment for a mutinous legion was quite certain. One member of every ten was chosen by lot. The selected members were then executed. That practice was common enough that it had a specific word: decimate. Over the years, the meaning of that word has evolved and the one in ten part of it is considered obsolete in the dictionaries. But the old sense of the word comes to mind when I read this bit of news. The New York Times will be cutting almost one out of every ten members of its newsroom staff.
After years of resisting the newsroom cuts that have hit most of the industry, The New York Times will bow to growing financial strain and eliminate about 100 newsroom jobs this year, the executive editor said Thursday.
The cuts will be achieved by “by not filling jobs that go vacant, by offering buyouts, and if necessary by layoffs,” said the executive editor, Bill Keller. The more people who accept buyouts, he said, “the smaller the prospect of layoffs, but we should brace ourselves for the likelihood that there will be some layoffs.”
The Times has 1,332 newsroom employees, the largest number in its history; no other American newspaper has more than about 900. There were scattered buyouts and job eliminations in The Times’ newsroom in recent years, but the overall number continued to rise, largely because of the growth of its Internet operations.
Shares in The New York Times Company rose almost 5 percent Thursday after the newsroom staff reductions were reported, closing at $18.84, up 86 cents.
The Times Company has made significant cuts in the newsrooms of some of its other properties, including The Boston Globe, as well as in non-news operations. Company executives say the overall head count is 3.8 percent lower than it was a year ago.
But with the industry’s economic picture worsening, the company is under increased pressure from shareholders — notably two hedge funds that recently bought almost 10 percent of the common stock — to do something dramatic to improve its bottom line.
For 2007, it recently reported earnings of $209 million on revenue of $3.2 billion.
Newspaper industry ad revenue fell about 7 percent last year, and 4.7 percent at The Times Company, and executives around the industry have projected that 2008 will be equally bad.
Other large newspapers have made much bigger cuts, proportionally, than those The Times is planning; some newsrooms are more than 20 percent smaller than they were early in this decade.
Of course, the staffers aren't mutinous and they won't be executed. But they'll be out of jobs in a tough market for journalists. (Attention journalism school students! Are you sure you know what you're heading into?) The real problem is that people are not buying the stuff the majors newspapers are pushing. It is not the workmanship of the journalists. It is the editorial slant creeping into almost every aspect of the news that is repulsing the buying public.
But notice, it isn't the editors or the publishers who pay the price for that bad policy.
10 Responses to “Decimate”
"The real problem is that people are not buying the stuff the majors newspapers are pushing. It is not the workmanship of the journalists. It is the editorial slant creeping into almost every aspect of the news that is repulsing the buying public. "oh, come on. You don’t really believe that, do you? It’s not the slant. It’s the product of cutting education to the point where the attention span of an average person is about as long as a sparrow’s. I know, I teach them when they are young - at least trying to with the class sizes that I am given. Lou Dobbs with his extreme slant somehow manages to stay afloat - mostly IMO because he substitutes sound bites and yelling for thoughtful analysis.
Just as in every other industry, the worker bees are the ones laid off. It could be that the workmanship of the journalists is faulty; but, as I was taught in management classes, quality control is a management function
Yuri:
mostly IMO because he substitutes sound bites and yelling for thoughtful analysis.
As you have pointed out, this very same watering-down of news occurs in schools. Students need to repeat the (ahem) educational sound bites to pass the tests and are actively discouraged from analyses of issues. I still take classes whenever I have free time and spare dough and the quality of those has degenerated tremendously over the past quarter-century.
I meant classes, although the free time and spare dough have become diluted as well.
Couple of years back I had a fantastic teacher at a community college who loved his job and did it well. Three years before that I had an “educator” at Georgetown who I would not dignify with the title of “teacher”, yet he was paid vastly more than his better. Unconscionable, of course, but all schools seem to view anything other than rote adherence to the “USA Today” textbooks we get these days as a bug instead of a feature. Hell, back in ‘87 I was one of only two in the incoming class to test out of a writing competency review. Think on that. Even a whole drinking adult ago (private) schools knew that the incoming students were so incompetent that they had to set up courses so the students could un-learn what they had been force-fed or reprogram bad habits that had never been corrected. That is disgusting, and it is why I’ve supported merit-based incentives. Because the schools haven’t gotten any better.
I think that Gaius’ primary point, that it is the enlisted man who pays the ultimate price for the officer’s mistake, is not what you are arguing against here. So it must be his ancillary, that the purported hard news is more readily seen as masquerading editorialist pabulum. I do not believe that you have answered that. You have deflected, although I understand your grievance. I share it. Teach it to your students. Neal Stephenson had a book, The Diamond Age, in which it was suggested that the most valuable lesson children could learn was subversion. It’s well worth a read.
It’s late, I’m mellow and full of beer and that preview function that was here earlier seems to have gone the way of the dodo so I will leave you with my heartfelt words of encouragement:
Teach them how to learn. If you do, the odds are that you will be the best teacher they have. You’ve got one of the most important and meaningful jobs that there is. Do the best you can, and good luck to you.
I bought the NY Times and read it nearly everyday until about 12 years ago when I found a liberal agenda somehow tucked into every article, even the science times on Tuesday.
Jason Blair was made a full-time NYT staff reporter not because of the quality of his work but because he fabricated stories his editor liked. And that scandal was just the tip of the iceberg.
And just when the NY Times moved into its state-of-the-art new-agey highrise office building.
Uncle Pinky"I think that Gaius’ primary point, that it is the enlisted man who pays the ultimate price for the officer’s mistake, is not what you are arguing against here"No, I actually agree with Gaius on this one. I disagree that this is due to "slant".
Anyone else experiencing "schadenfreude"?
Decimation was also the punishment for a rebellious town or province in the Roman Empire. Once a rebellion was quelled and the town or area was pacified, the Roman Legionaires would line up all of the able bodied adult males from that town and simply walk down the line stabbing every tenth man to death. This was done in a public square so everyone else could watch the results of rebellion against Rome.
You don’t actually need that many reporters when you can sit at your desk and write stories…as in fables.
Cool. Yuri gave me an italicized name. I am one with the luminaries.
The thing I was pointing out, my vowel rich friend, was that your foot-stamping diatribe was aimed at the extremities, rather than the body (or even origin) of the post. You will find that, while agreeing in part with your comment, I found it off-target and somewhat lacking in the tone that a guest owes his host by the ancient rite of “It is his house and thusly he is more immediately aware of the location of hammers, handguns and sharp stabby items than I. Resolved: I shall be polite.” Nevertheless, I spent some time agreeing with a portion of your point (misdirected as it was) and propping up your low self-esteem by affirming your career. I could have just been an impulsive jerk and set fire to your straw man, sifted through the ashes and found the annealed (but remarkably blunt) needle you try to poke with, but I figured that gentle correction with a couple of atta-boys and a little “Hey, we’re all trying to make the world a better place” might cause you to open a fresh eye and put a buckle on that jerky knee of yours. Some old Greek hemlock fancier used to do similar things, but as a teacher who assumes his students have the attention span of a sparrow (for this he was taught) you might have lightly skipped over this.
Last night I was mellow and full of beer, but this night I am mellow, amused and full of high-octane Bloody Mary mix with fresh horseradish, stout, beef broth and real grated wasabi. The full spectrum that ethanol can be delivered in arrived as well, and some stinky cigars, so if my next words seem harsh console yourself with the fact that I would happily say them to your face … very close … with breath that could kill an old lady at ten paces.
You seem to have nascent, inchoate form of intelligence. If outrage were not your preferred mode of expression, it might develop through time and testing into self-awareness. I suspect, however, that you stopped learning a long time ago. You confused repetition of patterns as growth. The next time that you think “I’ve done this for x years” know that you have done the same year x times, learned nothing, and have passed off your entropy as experience. I recall your advent here in the House of Gaius. You were a jerk then. Guess what. Time does not change all things.
oh, come on. You don’t really believe that, do you? It’s not the slant. It’s the product of cutting education to the point where the attention span of an average person is about as long as a sparrow’s. I know, I teach them when they are young - at least trying to with the class sizes that I am given
Class size, in theory doesn’t matter. You could try harder. You could stop being a whiny little putz. But, even if I were feeling charitable to you right now, you are still dead wrong. Have you not learned Econ 101 yet? Mac or mic, if the product is anathema … ddunh dunh dunh … the business fails. Yet you, in a stunning display of autodefenstration claim that your job is causing newspapers to fail because … you … teach them while they’re young. Oh. Right. It was the Government.
Where do you think they learn to avoid taking responsibility? Right where you blamed it on everybody … anybody … other than yourself.
Far as I’m concerned, boyok, I’m going to give you three foot of rope, an L-level and some surgical tape. When your urine gets up to three feet on manila hemp at ninety degrees you can come back and play again.
Sorry, almost forgot that you need things spelled out.
Go piss up a rope.