Honing the ax

John Solomon employs every possible euphemism to avoid using the words "layoffs" and "early retirements," but it's very clear what's coming at The Washington Times:

As we discussed in our private coffees a few weeks ago, reshaping the newsroom for the challenges of the 21st century and moving the entire company toward profitability were going to require many tough decisions. This is especially true in the current marketplace where traditional revenues are down across the industry. With the arrival of our new budget year, the first round of those tough decisions has arrived: we must determine the appropriate size of the newsroom for its new mission and current resources.

Hint, hint, hint. Solomon continues:

But we still need to find additional savings under our 2008 budget that takes effect today. And just as important, we need to inject new skill sets into the newsroom to ensure we can compete in the news marketplace of tomorrow.
Over the next few weeks, we will make a difficult journey. The effort will be expeditious and fair, even-handed and humane. It will require us to say goodbye to some colleagues we have known for many years and to celebrate their many accomplishments as they leave us. It will also allow us to welcome some new colleagues whose skills will improve our capabilities, particularly in the digital arena.

I've only met Solomon once, and have no real inside information about what he plans. But what he is saying, pretty clearly, is that he's going to ditch a lot of the current staff -- including people who've been there many years -- and replace them with a bunch of new people whom he's pretty much going to handpick himself.

If this is like what has happened at other publications (and the entire newspaper industry has been shrinking for more than a decade), then certain senior staffers -- those over a certain age, who've been there a certain number of years -- will be offered buyouts or early retirement packages. Certain junior staffers, who don't meet the minimums, will simply be laid off.

Again, based on what has happened at other papers, what Solomon will do is to attempt to replace high-salaried experienced staffers with new hires with less experience who will work for smaller salaries.

Special attention must be paid to Solomon's phrase "new colleagues whose skills will improve our capabilities, particularly in the digital arena."

Having spent 10 years at The Washington Times, I know exactly what he's talking about. Some older journalists simply refuse to learn anything about the Internet. Hell, some journalists have never even learned the most basic keyboard functions on a PC. They have thus allowed their technophobia (or sheer laziness) to render them effectively obsolete.

I feel sorry for any of my former colleagues who will suffer from the "restructuring" that Solomon's warning about, but some of them will be victims of their own indifference to changes in the newspaper industry.

Anybody in the newspaper business who's earning over $50,000 a year and has accumulated four weeks' annual vacation is a fat target for any publisher who's looking to cut costs. Ditto anybody with health issues that require lots of medical treatment. If, in addition to those deficits, you also don't bother to stay on top of the technology required to keep pace with your competition ... Hey, welcome to Layoff City, pal.

I left The Washington Times in January because I had a contract to research a book, and couldn't make that fit into my work schedule. (Not long ago, I saw where a New York Times columnist was listed as being "on book sabbatical." No such thing at small papers.)

However, the timing of my departure -- immediately after Solomon's hiring was announced -- was not purely accidental. I knew Solomon would come into the newsroom with a mission to cut staff, and I didn't relish the idea of going into the office every day wondering if I had a target on my back. Now, some of the people at work who told me I was crazy to quit can enjoy the piranha-pool paranoia of an office environment where downsizing has been announced, but the names haven't yet been named.

Look: I was under 50, earning over $50K, with seven dependents enrolled on the company health plan, four weeks' annual vacation, and tons of accumulated sick leave (since I probably took no more than 10 sick days in 10 years). Even without the additional burden of a right-wing reputation, I would have been an obvious target for any new editor looking to cut costs.

People under 50 don't get buyouts or early retirements, they just get laid off.

You can do some research and see how many people laid off in these recent newspaper downsizings ever work at another newspaper again. Other editors will interpret that layoff as a signal that you were relatively unproductive, and who wants to hire a relatively unproductive journalist?

In a downsizing industry, it's better to quit -- or even to be "fired for cause" -- than to be laid off. If they really want to keep you, they'll ask you to stay. And nobody asked me. I was born at night, but it wasn't last night.