The New York Times will be buying out editors — and eliminating the public editor position — in order to hire more writers, the paper announced Wednesday.
In a memo sent to its newsroom, executive editor Dean Baquet and his managing editor said the Times is heeding the advice of its own internal study by eliminating a second layer of editing.
"Our goal is to significantly shift the balance of editors to reporters at The Times, giving us more on-the-ground journalists developing original work than ever before," they said in the memo.
Reducing the layers of editing was a primary recommendation from the 2020 Report, a study the NYT released in January.
The Times will resort to layoffs if they don't get enough volunteers to take the buyout, the savings from which it plans to hire 100 more writers, the editors said in the memo.
The elimination of the public editor position and its current editor — Liz Spayd — was announced by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in a separate memo.
"The responsibility of the public editor — to serve as the reader's representative — has outgrown that one office. Our business requires that we must all seek to hold ourselves accountable to our readers. When our audience has questions or concerns, whether about current events or our coverage decisions, we must answer them ourselves," Sulzberger wrote.
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