668 employees accept L.A. Times buyout p.

By: M.L. Stein

A total of 668 employees ? well over the paper's 500 goal ? are participating in the Los Angeles Times' voluntary separation program to cut costs, it was announced.
Of the number, 88 are from the editorial department and include such well-known bylines as Robert Scheer, Bella Stumbo, Rudy Abramson, David Freed, Robert Toth, Laurie Becklund, Charles Powers and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Paul Conrad.
Political writer Scheer will contribute to the Times on a free-lance basis and Conrad will draw for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, with his work apearing twice a week in the Times, according to editor and vice president Shelby Coffey III. Most of those who took the offer will leave the Times by the end of March, it was reported.
Coffey said the departing staffers will be missed but noted that the Times, the nation's largest metropolitan daily, has an editorial staff of over 1,000, including some 400 writers.
"We are not gutted by any means," he added. Coffey said the vacancies will be addressed by "minimal hiring," transfers, promotions and restructuring.
In certain cases, at the request of their editors or the staffers themselves, he talked to them about their plan to leave and persuaded some to stay, Coffey related.
The buyout program, which began Nov. 6 and ended Jan. 15, was offered to 5,200 full-time employees with at least one year of service. Age was not a factor in the company's acceptance of the applicants but seniority was.
Publisher David Laventhol said that the cost of the program will be charged against the fourth quarter earnings of Times Mirror, the Times' parent company.