NYTimes Staffers Worried About 'Click Bait' Stories

The New York Times is scrambling to quell a staff rebellion at its metro desk after the section’s editor, Cliff Levy, unleashed a blistering email to staffers last week, saying the section had “lost its footing” and was in need of “urgent” change.

According to The NYPost, The News Guild of New York, which represents the 40-plus journalists in the section, called Levy’s memo a “public fragging” by Times management and said his offer of “voluntary” buyouts as the section became more web-focused was “an unexpected threat to our journalism and our jobs.”

In a bid to defuse anger in the ranks, top brass showed up for a town hall meeting Friday afternoon, including publisher, AG Sulzberger, executive editor Dean Baquet, CEO Mark Thompson and Levy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning metro editor whose memo last week triggered the uproar.

In particular, they were forced to defuse concerns about Levy’s allegation that some metro deskers were resistant to adapting to the digital age.

Sulzberger — in an admission that surprised many of the some 125 Times staffers who gathered for the meeting on the 15th floor of the Times headquarters in Midtown — revealed that he had read the memo before it went out.

“He said it didn’t land in his brain the same way it landed in the collective mind of the metro desk,” said one insider who attended the meeting. “He didn’t see it for what it became — the bomb that impugned our reporting,” the insider added.

Times brass said the voluntary buyouts that are being offered are not a prelude to involuntary layoffs. Baquet, apologizing for the mixed message, clarified that “for the people that don’t want to go along on the bumpy ride, here’s a chance to take a buyout,” according to an attendee.

In Levy’s original memo, he said he wanted reporters to write stories that “engaged” the audience and had “impact” but said that they would not be judged by clicks alone.

Many worried staffers took that to mean that Levy did intend to use clicks — how many times a digital story was read — as at least one of the criteria in evaluations. Many worried that “click bait” stories whose sole mission is to draw eyeballs could become a factor in their evaluations.