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Tough times at the NYTimes:

October 19, 2009 , 2:49 pm
Times Says It Will Cut 100 Newsroom Jobs
By Richard Perez-Pena

The New York Times plans to eliminate 100 newsroom jobs – about 8 percent of the total – by year’s end, offering buyouts to union and non-union employees, and resorting to layoffs if it cannot get enough people to leave voluntarily, the paper announced on Monday.

The program mirrors one carried out in the spring of 2008, when the paper erased 100 positions in its newsroom, though other jobs were created, so the net reduction was smaller. That round of cuts included some layoffs of journalists – about 15 to 20, though The Times would not disclose the actual figure – which was the first time in memory that had happened.

The paper has made much deeper reductions in other, non-newsroom departments, where layoffs have occurred several times. But the advertising drop that has pummeled the industry has forced cuts in the news operation, as well. The newsroom already has lowered its budgets for free-lancers and trimmed other expenses, and employees took a 5 percent pay cut for most of this year.

Nearly all metropolitan papers have been cutting their news operations for years, and some have fewer than half as many people in their newsrooms as they did in 2000.

The Times’ news department peaked at more than 1,330 employees before the last round of cuts. The current headcount is about 1,250; no other American newspaper has more than about 750.

Wonder if the NYT’s “opinion media monitor” position is on the chopping block, too?