New York Times Will Offer Employee Buyouts and Eliminate Public Editor Role

The New York Times offered buyouts to its newsroom employees, aiming to reduce layers of editing and requiring more of the editors who remain. In a memo to the newsroom, Dean Baquet, the executive editor, and Joseph Kahn, the managing editor, said the current system of “backfielders” and copy editors — two separate groups who have different tasks before a story is published — would be replaced with a single group of editors who would be responsible for all aspects of a story. Another editor would be “looking over their shoulders before publication.”

In a separate memo, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, said The Times would be eliminating the position of public editor. Liz Spayd, the current public editor, will leave The Times on June 2. The buyouts are aimed primarily at editors, but reporters and others in the newsroom would be free to apply as well, the memo said. Baquet and Kahn said that the savings would be used to hire as many as 100 more journalists.