http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/business/media/when-the-forces-of-disruption-hit-home.html 2014-12-01 02:23:25 When the Forces of Disruption Hit Home The Internet lowered the barriers to entry for journalism. This has been great for consumers, and not so great for the traditional news industry, because the inefficiencies were also profits by another name. === I’ve been around long enough to have once marveled at the improbability of the fax machine — that can’t be real! — but I like to think of myself as modern. Which should mean that I’m a big fan of disruption, but that depends on who is being disrupted, doesn’t it? I read on Friday that the In both cases, inefficiency was reduced by using software and smarts to create a new market of underused assets — and consumers have benefited. (Perhaps not in ways that will continue to pass regulatory muster, but that’s a longer story.) I work in an industry that has also been profoundly disrupted. The shift of news and information to the Internet meant that the heavy investment in trucks and presses that once served as a barrier to entry disappeared. Insurgents flooded in with new approaches that eliminated much of the inefficiency and created whole new streams of content. Again, great for consumers, not so great for the traditional news industry, because those inefficiencies were also profits by another name. Right now, The New York Times is in the middle of a round of buyouts in an effort to cut 100 positions, to stretch existing revenue over a smaller cost base. The packages are generous — three weeks of salary for every year worked for union employees — and those who have been at the newspaper for at least 20 years are eligible for an additional payout of 35 percent of the total severance. Buying out those folks — layoffs will follow if the goal of 100 jobs is not met — also allows the organization to invest in new technologies and the people who build them. The Times, which has been disrupted from without, is doing some disrupting from within, striving to make sure that articles are visible on the web and resonate on social media, that we have advertising that merits something besides commodity prices, and that our video journalism will reflect our news values while meeting the changing needs of consumers. Even with the cuts, we will be about as large as we’ve ever been, with new faces and new skills. It’s all good, right? Well, not all of it. I work closely with a few longtime employees who are considering the buyouts. The deadline for putting up their hand is Monday, and it seems clear that we will be losing people with many decades of professional experience, journalists with deep sources and remarkable levels of productivity. It’s hard to put a price on what those hard-won skills are worth. The Times will always be bigger than any one individual and will no doubt find people inside and outside the building who will do their own version of amazing things, but it’s still scary to think about making our way without some of the people who plan to leave. We need to adapt quickly to new protocols, but we can’t lose the core, the journalism that makes The Times, The Times. Last week, when I was discussing the possible departures with a colleague who was considering a buyout, it struck me how many times I have read about buyouts and layoffs and just shrugged it off. The steady downward drumbeat in the legacy news business has generally left me inured to the consequences. After all, the same is happening in other industries. Sprint is in the middle of layoffs, and Hewlett-Packard has hinted that it will be looking at more in the near future. Warner Brothers And it’s always good to remember that things could be worse, far worse, in a business as challenged as journalism. At the And it goes from the ridiculous to the sublimely ridiculous. At The Orange County Register, which has struggled through layoffs and Now that’s some mighty disruptive thinking: Instead of hiring people to take care of customers, why not entice other employees to do it, and pay them in crustacean instead of cold cash? It gets even more difficult to believe. Reporters are also among those now being asked to, um, deliver the newspaper. People willing to rise early and deliver the paper on critical days would receive, not cash, but gift cards. “A full route — which averages about 500-600 newspapers — earns $150 in Visa gift cards,” So while some disruption leads to innovation and new ways of reaching consumers, there’s this other kind, in which news organizations are so bereft that they beg professionals whose job it is to fill the newspaper to then switch job assignments and throw it into people’s front yard. To reporters at The Register who have suffered through job cuts, rollbacks and retrenchments, and now these latest indignities, that probably doesn’t scan as progress. It probably feels like a whole lot of disruption.