The company today announced plans to reduce its newsroom staff by eight percent by the end of 2009. Cuts will be made by buyout, but the company will resort to layoffs should its hand be forced.

“As before, if we do not reach 100 positions through buyouts, we will be forced to go to layoffs,” New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote in a note to employees. I hope that won’t happen, but it might. I won’t pretend that these staff cuts will not add to the burdens of journalists whose responsibilities have grown faster than their compensation. Like you, I yearn for the day when we can do our jobs without looking over our shoulders for economic thunderstorms.”

Sad, sad news for a storied newspaper and an imperiled industry.

Keller’s memo in full, below:

Colleagues,

I had planned to invite you to the newsroom and break this news in person today, but I’ve been hit by something that seems to be the flu. Though I strongly believe in delivering bad news in person, I don’t want to add insult to injury by spreading infection.

Let me cut to the chase: We have been told to reduce the newsroom by 100 positions between now and the end of the year.

We hope to accomplish this by offering voluntary buyouts. On Thursday, the Company will be sending buyout offers to everyone in the newsroom. Getting a buyout package does NOT mean we want you to leave. It is simply easier to send the envelopes to everyone. If you think a buyout may be right for you, you have up to 45 days to decide whether you will accept it or not.

As before, if we do not reach 100 positions through buyouts, we will be forced to go to layoffs. I hope that won’t happen, but it might.

Our colleagues in editorial and op-ed, and on the business side, also face another round of budget cuts.

In recent years, we’ve managed to avoid the disabling cutbacks that have hit other newsrooms. The Company has chosen to protect the journalism by cutting production and other business-side costs, and the newsroom itself has managed its resources frugally. These latest cuts will still leave us with the largest, strongest and most ambitious editorial staff of any newsroom in the country, if not the world.

I won’t pretend that these staff cuts will not add to the burdens of journalists whose responsibilities have grown faster than their compensation. But we’ve been looking hard at ways to minimize the impact–in part, by re-engineering some of our copy flow. I won’t promise this will be easy or painless, but I believe we can weather these cuts without seriously compromising our commitment to coverage of the region, the country and the world. We will remain the single best news organization on earth.

I doubt that anyone is shocked by the fact of this, but it is happening sooner than anyone anticipated. When we took our 5 percent pay cuts, it was in the hope that this would fend off the need for more staff cuts this year. But I accept that if it’s going to happen, it should be done quickly. We will get through this and move on.

In my absence, Bill Schmidt and John and Jill have volunteered to take your questions this afternoon. Feel free to bring additional questions to me as soon as I’m back, or check with Bill Schmidt or John or Jill privately, or save them for the next Throw Stuff at Bill session, which is in a couple of weeks.

We often–and rightly–voice our gratitude that we work for a company and a family that prize quality journalism above all. I hope you know that the company and the family, and I, feel an equal debt of gratitude to all of you whose sacrifice and loyalty have kept us strong.

Like you, I yearn for the day when we can do our jobs without looking over our shoulders for economic thunderstorms.

Bill

While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies.”

– Rep. Tom Lantos (D., Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callaghan, Nov. 6, 2007

Yahoo’s public shaming before the House Foreign Affairs Committee last November apparently had quite an effect on Internet companies cooperating with Chinese government censorship and demands for information on dissidents. Less than a year after that brutal Capitol Hill humiliation, during which Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D., Calif.) lambasted Yahoo’s leadership as moral “pygmies,” Yahoo (YHOO), along with Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG), is introducing a code of conduct that will govern their business practices in repressive countries. The Global Network Initiative, as it’s called, commits the companies to a general support for freedom of expression on the Internet, requiring them to at least try to “avoid or minimize the impact of government restrictions on freedom of expression” and to “narrowly interpret and implement government demands that compromise privacy.”

“The idea is that we believe the guidelines will need to be reviewed, and we will have to revise them as we take into account the actual experience,” said Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China, which helped draft the initiative. “It envisions an ongoing process of learning and sharing best practices.”

That’s a great step forward for firms like Google, which censors its search results in China, and Yahoo, which handed over emails to the Chinese government that led to the imprisonment of two journalists. But with no bans or sanctions on any specific conduct and most of its key guidelines left entirely up to interpretation, The Global Network Initiative seems more like an effort on the part of the participating companies to avoid legislation on their conduct abroad than anything else–a “We Promise to Be Good if You’ll Just Leave Us Alone” code, if you will. “After two years of effort, they have ended up with so little,” said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA. “It is really very little more than a broad statement of support for a general principle without any concrete backup mechanism to ensure that the guidelines will be followed.”