NYT’s buyouts, footing remark kick in pants
THE metro staff of the New York Times is in turmoil as it braces for evaluations and “voluntary” buyouts that will be coming before the end of November.
New Metro Editor Cliff Levy, who was named as the replacement to interim metro editor Susan Chira two months ago, angered staffers with a recent memo offering buyouts to a section that he said “has lost its footing” and needs “urgent” change.
“Metro has often produced strong work in recent years and will always be at the core of the New York Times mission,” Levy wrote, “but my overall judgment is that Metro has lost its footing and needs urgent, fundamental change,” he continued in the memo.
“The memo just struck some people as nasty,” said one source. Another said insiders are in “total freak-out mode.”
Wendell Jamieson was the metro editor until he was forced out earlier this year after being accused of inappropriate behavior with several women.
The claims against Jamieson were never fully explained by management, which did not help morale in a section of the paper that had been championed by Jamieson but often felt overlooked and starved for resources.
In a 2008 redesign, metro lost its status as a section with a “front” in the local print edition. And in the 2013 layoffs at the paper, its staff was cut from around 60 to the just over 40 people it has today.
“Our department remains grounded in a print approach and a print sensibility, often seemingly clinging to the idea that longstanding practices should be enough to get by in the digital era,” Levy wrote.
He said the journalists in the section “must think much more intensely about how we are engaging readers (and listeners and viewers) on our digital platforms.”
“In evaluating your work, I will be focusing much more on the ability of metro reporters and editors to engage audiences,” Levy added.
And then came the kicker: “We’ll be offering buyouts for Guild-represented reporters and editors who have been on Metro for at least one year,” he said.
“People think they will be ‘perfomance appraisaled’ out of a job,” said one source.
The NewsGuild of New York said they have been assured that nobody will be involuntarily terminated and there is no specific number of buyouts.
“Cliff Levy has articulated a vision that is very much digitally oriented. We’re not walking away from print, but it is an acknowledgment that there might be people on the staff who are not aligned with that vision,” a NY Times spokeswoman confirmed.
Say cheese
Cheddar, a financial news site for the “post-cable era” of millennials, has just landed its first-ever managing editor: Kristen Lee.
Lee was among the 40-plus reporters and editors tossed out of the Daily News by Tribune Publishing company (then known as Tronc) in August as it laid off 105 people, including half of the people in its newsroom.
Lee started at the News in 2012 as a political reporter and was promoted to managing editor in early 2018 by then-editor Jim Rich. She’s among a handful who have landed safely before the severance runs out at the end of November.
Said Cheddar Editor-in-Chief Jim Roberts in his memo to staffers announcingg the move on Tuesday: “From my very first conversation with Kristen, it was clear to me that she was poised to play a powerful and essential role in our growing news operation. She gets what we’re trying to do at Cheddar and she has the energy, imagination and common sense we need to adapt our firstrate live television into digital platforms.”
Cheddar, headed by former BuzzFeed president Jon Steinberg, appears to be one of the few digital publishers still adept at attracting venture money. Since launching two years ago, it has raised $33 million, including a Class D round of $22 million led by Raine Ventures in March with additional backing from Comcast, AT&T, Altice USA and Amazon.
Buying the farm
The old cow pasture just sold for $54 million. The 48-acre parcel of land in Melville, Long Island, where Newsday is based — once lamppooned as a cow pasture by then Daily News co-owner Fred Drasner — has fetched $54 million, according to Tribune Media. The new owner is Leonard Stern’s Hartz Mountain Industries. Newsday Media Group, now an independent company owned by Patrick Dolan and other family members who once owned Cablevison, is shopping for smaller digs. Newsday got rid of all its printers and truck drivers earlier this year, laying off around 300. No official word yet on where the smaller digs for the remaining editorial and ad staff will be.