Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
A buyout offer to be announced Monday will try to cut 70 newsroom jobs, taking the editorial staff from 920 to around 850. Before Tribune took over the news staff was well over 1,000. Layoffs would likely follow if the buyouts don't induce the required number to leave — probably concentrated among the most experienced, and thus most expensive, reporters, editors, photographers and other staffers. A story posted at LATimes.com says the goal is 150 job cuts newspaper wide. This, of course, comes within about a year of two LAT publishers and the editor in chief warning Tribune that cuts of this magnitude would severely damage the paper's product and appeal to readers.
* Update from LA Biz Observed: LAT design director Joe Hutchinson is leaving for Rolliing Stone, Mark Lacter reports. Hutchinson had earlier turned down the art director spot at RS, according to Keith Kelly in the New York Post. Hutchinson was brought to the Times from the Baltimore Sun when his boss there, John Carroll, took over in Los Angeles. Hutchinson's responsibilities here were dialed back under Dean Baquet, and his front-page redesign last year has been gradually, uh, refined by the editors and other designers.
Revised staffing numbers from Times