'Wash Post' Details Buyout Of 100-Plus News Staffers

By: Joe Strupp It looks like the seven-day waiting period for employees at The Washington Post to reconsider their buyout did not change many minds as more than 100 newsroom staffers have finalized plans to leave the paper with the buyout packages, some of which run up to two years of salary.

The Post today addressed the issue head-on with a section-front story that named many of the prominent buyout-takers, although few were surprises as the Internet has been burning up in recent weeks with leaks of the editors and writers who were agreeing to leave.

The seven-day period passed on Thursday, one week after the employee deadline for signing up for a buyout.

The story confirmed what editors, including Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., have said for the past week -- that more than 10% of the 700-plus newsroom staff would leave, about half of the 230 staffers eligible for the buyouts.

The offer was available to all employees who are 50 years of age or older with five years at the paper.

"A number of familiar bylines will leave for good or no longer appear regularly in the paper, including those of military affairs reporter Thomas E. Ricks; feature writers Linton Weeks and Peter Carlson; health reporter Laura Sessions Stepp; science reporter Rick Weiss; the husband-and-wife foreign correspondent team of John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore; critics Stephen Hunter, Desson Thomson and Tim Page; Federal Diary columnist Stephen Barr; Weekend writers Richard Harrington and Eve Zibart; and Metro reporters Sue Anne Pressley Montes and Yolanda Woodlee," the story stated.

It also noted the previously reported buyouts of Political Columnist David Broder and Sports Columnist Tony Kornheiser. Broder, however, will remain as a contracted employee.

The story also mentioned that several Pulitzer Prize winners are departing, including Ricks, Broder, Page and Hunter.

"I realized about a year ago I no longer had to be the film critic," Hunter, a novelist who has a book coming out in September and commutes from Baltimore, told the paper. "Part of it was New York Avenue fatigue, part of it was movie fatigue, part of it was CGI fatigue," he said, referring to digitally rendered movie special effects. "I'm doing what The Post would not do: I'm firing myself for being too old."

E&P has previously revealed the list of editors departing, which the Post confirmed today, naming: "Deborah Heard, the Style section's top editor, and Michael Keegan, who runs the News Art department. Other key editors leaving are Maralee Schwartz and Tony Reid from the Business section; Home editor Belle Elving; Travel editor K.C. Summers; Book World editor Marie Arana; and from the Style section, editors John Pancake, Peter Kaufman, Lynne Duke and Rose Jacobius, the longtime night editor and legendary headline writer."
This marks the third buyout plan at the Post in five years, the paper said: "The first came in 2003, the second in 2006. Post newsroom employment peaked at 908 in 2003; there are now about 780 full-time-equivalent newsroom workers. After the buyouts, that number will be about 700."

"'There is no plan right now to eliminate sections of the paper' or to reduce the frequency of their publication, Managing Editor Philip Bennett said yesterday. The buyouts will affect 'chiefly how we organize our coverage -- more how we do things than what we do,' he said. Bennett called the buyouts a 'very, very difficult and painful process.'"

The story did not mention the uncertainty over Downie, whose future has been under speculation since the appointment of new publisher Katharine Weymouth earlier this year. Downie, at the top post since 1991 and a Post employee since 1964, has not commented on whether he took a buyout or plans to leave this year, but he has said that Weymouth has a right to choose a new editor.