An Open Letter to The New York Times

How could you?
Any lingering bastion of Liberalism left from my youth and still feebly clinging to my cold Conservative heart was utterly and finally broken recently by your most selfish of actions. Any hope of a return in my post productive years to a more compassionate, interdependent, pacifist, Marxist existence lies, I am sad to say, in the wreckage you’ve wrought as well. This hit me that hard...

The New York Times Co. yesterday announced plans to cut 500 jobs from its payroll, with the deepest cuts occurring at its namesake newspaper and The Boston Globe, as advertising revenue remains in a slump.

The reduction, which represents about 4 percent of the company's workforce, comes on the heels of a 2 percent cut in May that saw 200 employees leave.
Officials said they hoped to achieve the reductions through a voluntary buyout program, but didn't rule out layoffs.

The Times' announcement occurred hours after The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News said they would eliminate 100 jobs between their newsrooms, a cut of 16 percent. The papers are owned by Knight Ridder.

Earlier this month, Newsday decided to scale back its New York City edition, leading to the elimination of 45 newsroom positions. And last month, the San Francisco Chronicle announced plans to cut 120 jobs.

At the Times Co., about half of the proposed cuts will be at the flagship paper, although the newsroom staff of 1,200 will be reduced by only 45 jobs.

How this can be?
Isn’t 'The Times’ a supposed Liberal paper? With Liberal ideals of the American worker? A worker based on the European model?
So I should believe that these unemployed workers will still be earning a ‘living wage’.
That there won’t be any sacred union jobs cut.
My God, please, at least let them not be the jobs of ‘minorities’ or women that are to be slashed.
Ah, but no matter how hard I try not to accept the truth, it becomes painfully obvious to me. You, The New York Times, while socially Liberal are, in the end, business-wise Conservative.
Your paper would seem to run on, and I say this with the deepest of trepidation, profit. Yes, alas, it has come to this...Capitalism and the profit motive. Oh, be still my breaking heart. That greatest of all evils. That dark tempting path to social inequity. That most vile of objectives of those ‘big evil corporations’. What has Bush done to you?
And what of the self esteem of your discarded comrades? How are they to recover from this? Can they? Will they? Oh, how can you sleep at night with the knowledge that you will be dooming these poor souls to an unbreakable cycle of poverty? Their children to inner city schools? Their very lives to the whims of a Republican led congress?
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. How you've lost your way. Lost your soul. And you have, I must sadly admit, brought me down right with you. Whatever faith I had in Liberal institutions has at last been thrown to the wolves. Devoured by reality and your lust for the profit motive.
Where is this poor sad soul to turn?
What is left for a disappointed future Liberal wannabe to do?
Oh, I’ve got it...it’s on channel 54 on my Comcast feed, I think it's called Fox News.

Crossposted @ The Wide Awakes