16 Apr 08 Buyouts galore, it’s a journalist blowout sale! Everything must go!

• ‘Modesto Bee’ Offers Buyouts to One-Fourth of its Employees
• ‘Tampa Tribune’ Offering Buyouts to Half of All Employees
• NY Times: ‘We expect layoffs’
• 200 Jobs to Go at ‘Seattle Times’
• CBS layoffs signal financial squeeze on TV stations
• Online Photo Gallery Depicts Sad Life In Post-Layoff ‘Mercury News’ - Link to photos is broken, CLICK HERE to see.

Yeah, so more bad news out of the newsrooms. Or is it?

Jack Schafer at Slate.com talks about the good news about the bad news coming out of newsrooms. In summary, newsrooms are getting rid of those that have sat in their cushy positions for far too long, cost the paper too much money in salary and are too far in their career to learn the new skills of the modern newsroom.

The “retirement” of the buyout brigade has the added benefit of loosening the ugly stranglehold the boomers have over the press. I may be risking self-extermination by advocating wholesale boomer expulsion, but there are just too many of us—especially the older variety—in top slots for journalism’s good. The sheer weight of our presence blocks the promotion of the next generation of talented journalists to the most desirable beats.

I’m in inclined to agree, almost wholeheartedly. Journalism is one of those jobs that, though difficult to break into, one can hang on to the position for decades. Once a journalist makes a name for themselves they become highly sought after by competitors, so in order for a paper to keep their “star” they must pay them more. That’s fine in the beginning, but eventually it spirals out of control.

Eventually those treasured giants who the paper is forced to pour vast resources into while being rewarded with limited output, must be purged. Buyouts are one way of doing that. This is not always the case however, and buyouts are not limited to those close to retirement age, but it is simply one way of looking at buyouts in a positive light. Not all is grim and gray as it may seem.

Though there’s no surefire solution to this problem now and no wants to be out of a job, but it’s one of the side effects of a market that can’t break out of it’s one-track, linear mindset. We need to learn to deal with it in order to move forward.

I’m going to talk about all of these things in the future, but the first priorities should be these:

• Fixing and modernizing the revenue model
• Standardize Web metrics for news sites
• Dismiss the “More with less” attitude
• Cross-platform training
• Understanding technology before integrating technology

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Tags: journalism, news business

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