NY Times Cuts 100; Reduces Salaries Across the Board

(MoneyWatch)  In our daily reminder that the entire newspaper industry is crumbling before our eyes, The New York Times has announced its latest retrenchment -- layoffs of 100 staffers on the business side of its operation, with virtually every other non-unionized position subject to a 5 percent salary cut.
An internal memo obtained by NYFishbowl adds that the company's management is asking the Newspaper Guild to follow suit, "in a spirit of shared sacrifice and as a way to otherwise avoid layoffs in the newsroom."
There are a couple of important points to note here:

• The Times is essentially threatening the Guild, much as the Hearst Corp. has done in San Francisco, by warning the union to play ball or expect to be hit. My prediction is a large wave of newsroom cuts later this spring.
• By cutting people from its business staff, the Times appears to be throwing in the towel on salvaging its existing business model. Unless you buy into the concept that there was a lot of dead wood sitting around in the company's sales, marketing, and BD departments, 100 fewer workers there should be but cold comfort to reporters, who have not been affected -- yet. Because these were the folks bringing home the bacon.
• The internal memo strikes a frank tone: "Clearly, our course is not getting any easier. The recession, especially the deteriorating advertising climate, is exacting a bitter toll, despite all that we have already done to reduce spending."
• The Times is still an extremely overstaffed operation, from any cost-of-content formula you could apply to justifying its scale of operations.

Meanwhile, executive pay at the top level, which has been frozen since 2006, will now fall by the 5 percent -- Chairman Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. has been making $1.09 million, CEO Janet Robinson $1 million -- although the new cuts are softened by a roughly 3 percent bonus both were awarded at the end of 2008, according to the company's 8-K filed with the SEC today.