...And sometimes a journalism student really can't have hope

The New York Times will Cut 100 Newsroom Jobs at the end of this year.

45 reporters will receive buy-out offers later this week, according to the company.

At least the newsroom wasn't the first place to face cuts, Richard Perez-Pena reports:

The paper has made much deeper reductions in other, non-newsroom departments, where layoffs have occurred several times. But the advertising drop that has pummeled the industry has forced cuts in the news operation as well. The newsroom already has lowered its budgets for freelancers and trimmed other expenses, and employees took a 5 percent pay cut for most of this year ... The Times’s news department peaked at more than 1,330 employees before the last round of cuts. The current headcount is about 1,250; no other American newspaper has more than about 750.

It's a small consolation to an aspiring journalist who all but idolized the NYTimes's institutional model a few years ago.

I witnessed newspaper buyouts first-hand as an editorial intern with the San Diego Union-Tribune last summer. The paper was on the verge of going up for sale, and offered buy-outs to close to 30 staff members—mostly older reporters and editors with long careers at the paper. My editor proudly declared, "I will go down with this ship!" posted lyrics to a Titanic song in his cubical, and hunkered down to weather the "economic thunderstorms" (as Bill Keller called the staff cuts in his open letter to NYTimes staffers) by starting a blog with the bleak name "threatened journalist"; one columnist took the buy-out and left without another word, refusing to finish out his month. The already somber newsroom was awash in whispers. Small, impromptu gatherings around the water-cooler turned into long-winded musings on the downfall of the newspaper industry, and more than one stranger walked by my desk to say "get out while you can, kid—it's not too late to change majors."

If they took the buyout offer, the U-T reporters' reasoned,they would be leaving familiar jobs where they have established reputations and credibility; but a buy-out is in many ways more attractive than the possibility of staying only to face lay-offs further down the line. Younger reporters who recently started at the U-T had no option, but became aware of their more-seasoned colleagues dilemma, and we all wondered if the U-T had reached a dead end.

The New York Times does amazing work, and I wish the reporters a lot of luck making this decision.