The Gray Lady’s Decline

As The New York Times ‘right-sizes’ its editorial staff, the death of print media approaches.

The nation’s most powerful newspaper, The New York Times, faces a sixth straight year of profit loss. The unions are forced to save editorial jobs by taking salary cuts. How does one make a living in print journalism anymore?

As Mike Elk reported last month on this website, in an effort to trim its overhead costs, in December the company froze the pensions of its foreign citizen employees and threatened to cut their health insurance benefits. A frozen pension means the company will no longer be contributing to that employee’s retirement account. The company is trying to cut pensions across the board, for both union and foreign nonunion employees, from The International Herald Tribune in Paris to foreign citizen Times staffers posted worldwide. (Contract talks with the Newspaper Guild union continue.)

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