Cuts to Total 125 at 2 Massachusetts Papers
The Boston Globe, which just undertook a wrenching staff reduction a year ago, told employees Thursday afternoon it would implement further cutbacks.
“Here is how Editorial will be affected,” Editor Martin Baron told Globe staffers in a memo. “We are aiming for a reduction of 19 staff positions in Editorial, including 17 on the news side and two on the opinion pages. Some current openings also will be frozen. In addition, we anticipate achieving cost savings through newshole and other expense reductions, which I will detail as soon as possible in coming weeks.”
In a separate memo, Publisher Steven Ainsley, who assumed the job only last fall, said the New England Media Group, which includes the Globe, the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram and Gazette and the Boston.com Web site, “is implementing a staff reduction program with a target of 125 positions.
“One component of this program will consist of voluntary buyouts that will be offered to eligible Exempt and Newspaper Guild employees at The Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram and Gazette who have 10 more years of service. However, certain functions will be excluded. Boston.com will not be affected. Eligible employees should receive a detailed explanation of this voluntary offer in the mail at their home during the week of January 29th. This part of the program should be completed by the end of the first quarter.”
The Globe newsroom has 412 full-time employees, spokesman Al Larkin told Journal-isms. Because the buyout offers will be extended to those who have been at the paper 10 years or more, and those journalists are largely white, “that’s a good thing in terms of helping to maintain a diverse” newsroom, he said. The Globe reported 19.9 percent journalists of color in the latest census of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
In September 2005, The New York Times Co., the Globe’s parent, announced that it planned to undertake staff reductions that would affect approximately 500 employees, about 4 percent of its total workforce.
The Globe decided to close its six-person national news department, though not its Washington bureau, to help achieve its share of the cost reductions. National Editor Kenneth J. Cooper, the Globe’s highest ranking African American line editor, decided then to leave the paper. He is now freelancing for magazines after a fellowship at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, researching black-Latino relations at the Institute of Politics.
Tatsha Robertson, who headed the New York City bureau, became news editor for Essence magazine and teaches at New York University. She was one of three journalists of color among 36 newsroom employees whose applications for buyouts were accepted, Baron said then. Renee Graham, who wrote about pop culture, and Tito Stevens, a sports copy editor, also took buyouts.
“The reality is, if we’d gone to layoffs, the impact on our diversity here would have been drastic,” Baron told Journal-isms then. He said the paper “worked very hard” to minimize the impact of the staff downsizing on newsroom diversity.