Several people laid off and bought out in the current bloodletting have raised this point: Is The List made up mostly of older people? Is Sam Zell, himself aging in Magoo-like senility, a self-hater? In other words, is there an age discrimination thing going on?
Only one way to answer that: crowd sourcing! Anybody laid off/bought out, send your age in to TellZell. I promise to keep it private, unless, for some reason (extra birthday presents? Chuck E. Cheese admission?) you want me to publicize.
I'll put all the names into a spreadsheet and figure out an average age. Then post! whatever number pops out. It's not perfect, but it might work. Mail your age in to inkstainedretch at gmail.com.
Severance Negotiations Conclusion
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Severance Negotiations Conclusion
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and while you're at it, for context, how about providing the average age of the pre-Zell LAT editorial staff, too. A breakdown of the female:male ratio would be insightful, too.
You're all a bunch of crybaby nincompoops. Get back to work.
I think the age discrimination lay offs began before Zell. I was 53 when I was laid off from the Hartford Courant last year. A year before that, a coworker of mine was let go and he was 55.
It's starting to all ad up....
If there's age discrimination, it's really no surprise because:
1) The older folks are higher salaried and costs more to the times.
1a) They are also more likely to be really using their benefits (health insurance, etc.) so dropping them will probably lower premiums too.
2) They are more likely to have been with the times longer so would have a better buyout/layoff package.
3) On a more sympathetic side, managers won't have to lay as many people off to make budget, and the more senior folks are more likely to be on more stable financial grounds and better able to land another job esp. with LAT on their resume.
Of course, the major downside is that there is (or will be) a lack of seasoned, experienced folks to nurture the next generation of journos.
I'd respect you all more if you didn't have a myopic fixation on editorial. Many, many more non-editorial employees have been let go over the years, both in real numbers and percentages. But you'd never know there even were any other employees at newspapers by the coverage you see from editorial.
I'm male, 58, laid off from The Times
We have a website devoted to Zell's discrimination agianst the elderly: http://mhcvsthelilliputians.cjb.net/
I'm 34. In the weeks before I was laid off, I received a 3% raise and a "wink-wink" assurance that I would be spared, mostly because of all the work I was doing on Times blogs. I know little about the law, but I do know that if all the cuts were targeted at older employees, there would be grounds for a class-action age-discrimination suit.
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