Pearl Harbor Day will have a new and ominous meaning this year for the employees of the New York Times.
On that day — Monday — members of the Newspaper Guild, the paper’s union for journalists, face a deadline to accept severance packages.
As of yesterday, it looked as if 50 unionized newsroom employees would be taking buyouts. But while that is far more than the 20 “volunteers” initially expected, it’s well short of Executive Editor Bill Keller‘s goal of paring down the journalist ranks by 100 people and means Keller and his team will be making the choice for some staffers.
This latest round of cuts is far deeper than the roughly 20 people cut in what has been called the Valentine’s Day Massacre of 2008.
That was the first-ever wave of layoffs in the paper’s more than 100-year history, and more than 100 positions were eliminated when voluntary buyouts are included in the total.
“Conservatively, they are still looking for 40 to 60 people [to cut],” said one insider, referring to the latest round.
Added Art Mulford, the Newspaper Guild representative at the Times: “People are holding their breath . . . We expect there will be a lot of tears by Thursday.”
Another source said that people who voluntarily accept the buyout will have to be out of the Times’ Eighth Avenue headquarters by Wednesday.
Then as the Christmas holiday draws closer, Keller will have to start swinging the ax to reach the desired number, with cuts possibly coming around Christmas Eve. All the cuts are expected to be completed by year end so the Times can take the writedown against earnings in the fourth quarter.
The jewels in the Times’s crown — people covering politics, business, foreign/national affairs and culture — are likely to be spared.
Geraldine Fabrikant, a veteran business reporter, is believed to be among the volunteers.
Copy desks across all departments expect to be clobbered, sources said.
Sports, which lost its separate-section status and is now tucked into the rear of the business section most days, is seen as a “weak franchise” and will see deep cuts, sources said.
So, too, will the Metro section, which used to be a standalone section for papers delivered across the tri-state Metropolitan region, but now runs in the back of the first section locally and not at all in the national editions. It is seen as “overpopulated,” said a source.
A Times spokeswoman said they did not have any estimates on the extent of the voluntary vs. involuntary cuts.
“It’s too soon to say,” she said. “Any numbers floating around now would only be guesses.”
New gadget
Time Inc. is using Sports Illustrated as its first magazine as it tries to navigate its way into the tablet world of e-readers.
Terry McDonell, group editor of Sports Illustrated, insisted that the device, called the Tablet, isn’t designed simply to find a way to replace lost ad revenue in the print editions.
“It was designed with the consumer in mind,” he said. “We’re the leader on this. The next phase is the integration of advertising,” he said.
Ad agencies will start to get their first look at the device sometime next week, and the devices are expected to go on sale in mid- 2010.
Prices haven’t been determined yet, but Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore in the past has said she’s keen on a price point of around $200.keith.kelly@nypost.com