“Sense of Betrayal”: NY Times’ Staff Rebellion (including culture writers and editors) UPDATED

Janet Robinson, exiting NY Times Co. CEO and president

The rebellious spirit of the times has just hit the Times, in the form of a Dec. 23 Open Letter to Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (the newspaper’s publisher).

NY Times culture reporters Carol Vogel, Randy Kennedy, Robin Pogrebin, Daniel Wakin, Patrick Healy and Larry Rohter, as well as co-chief art critic Roberta Smith, chief theater critic Ben Brantley, co-chief film critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, music critic Allan Kozinn and assistant culture desk head Laurel Graeber, were on the rapidly growing list of 383 signatories (at this writing) who expressed “profound dismay at several recent developments” in the Times contract talks:

Your negotiators have demanded a freeze of our pension plan and an end to our independent health insurance.

We ask you to withdraw these demands so that negotiations on a new contract can proceed fruitfully and expeditiously. We also urge you to reconsider the decision to eliminate the pensions of the foreign employees.

We have worked long and hard for this company and have given up pay to keep it solvent. Some of us have risked our lives for it. You have eloquently recognized and paid moving tribute to our work and devotion. The deep disconnect between those words and the demands of your negotiators have given rise to a sense of betrayal.

Adding fuel to this fire was the recent news (as reported by Peter Lauria of Reuters) that “Janet Robinson, who will step down as chief executive of the New York Times Co. on Dec. 31, will receive an exit package in excess of $15 million, according to people familiar with the situation. In addition to a $4.5 million consulting fee, the Times Co. will pay Robinson $10.9 million in pension benefits that she accrued over 28 years of service, they said.”

Robinson was alluded to, although not specifically named, in this passage from the employees’ “Open Letter”:

One of our colleagues in senior management recently announced her retirement from the paper, which is reported to include a very generous severance and retirement package, including full pension benefits.

All of us who work at the Times deserve to have a secured retirement; this should not be a privilege cynically reserved to senior management.

And in other NY Times “sense of betrayal” news: I’m one of the newspapers’ many home-delivery subscribers who just received a bogus e-mail (now reported as spam by JimRomenesko.com), which falsely claimed that we had “recently requested to cancel” the paper. Since I cannot live without my daily Times fix (and since I had just mailed my renewal check yesterday, on time), I panicked and immediately called the phone number provided.

I was not alone: A recording (which I hope was from the Times), informed me that the call volume was too great for them to take my call. Has a hacker with Caller ID now gotten hold of my number? The official explanation now up on the Times’ website doesn’t address whether or not our phone numbers, e-mail addresses and/or payment information have been compromised. [See UPDATE, below.]

Here’s the purported “Important information regarding your subscription.” (DO NOT CALL the phone number.)
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