Tuesday, December 8, 2009

NYT Reporter Ralph Blumenthal Confirms To NYTPicker: After 45 Years At NYT, He's Taking The Buyout.

After a 45-year career at the NYT, where he most recently served for five years as Southwest bureau chief based in Houston, Ralph Blumenthal confirmed to The NYTPicker that he has accepted the paper's buyout offer.

"It is correct," Blumenthal, now a metro reporter, told The NYTPicker via email. "I've had a long and fulfilling career at The Times. The offer of a buyout has spurred me to move on to some book projects and other challenges.

Blumenthal has had a storied career at the NYT that has included five books, including his most recent on Lewis Lawes, the warden of Sing Sing, for which Blumenthal got a Guggenheim fellowship. "Miracle at Sing Sing" was published by St. Martin’s in June of 2004.

Blumenthal reported for the NYT on numerous beats, including culture and crime, and covered the war in Vietnam for the paper from 1968 to 1971. In 1993 he led the NYT's coverage of the World Trade Center bombing, which earned the paper a Pulitzer Prize; in 1994 he won the Worth Bingham Prize for distinguished investigative reporting for stories on airline safety.

The buyout list at the NYT continues to grow; last night it was reported via a tweet by the New York Post's Joel Sherman that Jack Curry, the NYT's national baseball correspondent, had also accepted the NYT's buyout terms.

The list will grow, and its ranks will be joined later this week by those laid off by NYT management. Those decisions will be made on merit, as recently made clear to the staff by executive editor Bill Keller.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

i would have thought you guys would be ahead on reporting the people who will take buy outs. nonetheless, informative post.

Anonymous said...

Why should Nytpicker know more than the people taking the buyout? I doubt many are even thinking about it because for many it's the best job they'll ever have in their life.

I think there aren't enough burned out folks nearing retirement to fill out this round of layoffs. Alas.

Michael Powell said...

Ralph is hardly burned out. He is a prince of a guy and an elegant writer, with that rarest of talents, a sense a humor that glints through in print. His leave-taking is a loss for the Times.

Anonymous said...

Anon never said Ralph was burned out. He/she just said there aren't enough, this one is going to hurt, and there's no reason why Nytpicker should be able to get ahead on reporting this one. There aren't enough people taking the offer and so there's nothing to leak to Nytpicker.

Anonymous said...

there have been loads of leaks making its way around the blogosphere. but anyway, these buyouts and future layoffs are terrible. can the Times really do more with less?