Practicing what we preach

In the spirit of open-source Journalism, an anonymous logician points out some flaws in yesterday's post on the Belo Layoffs:

I hope your math improves between now and when you start your own publication. The Belo layoffs have either happened only in the last few days (TV) or won't happen until sometime this week (DMN). Which means those people to be laid off are still working and have been collecting their pay for the entire month of October so far. Which means you can't annualize them out as if the cost savings were their entire salaries for Q4.

Do 15 secs of research:

Belo ... believes the job cuts will save $16 million a year.

It's not clear whether they're talking about the 250 number or the 350 number. Either way, that would mean cost-saving per layoff (salary plus benefits) of $45,700 to $64,000.

Yowza. Now I know how Tim Rogers feels.

Our critic is mostly right. My response:

Hoorah! Our first critical comment-post.

And mostly correct at that. True, there are folks still working and the quarter is well underway. BUT, that doesn't account for the 100-plus unfilled positions that have been unfilled for quite some time. Those would more than make up for the time-lag you mention.

I probably should have been clearer that my math was "back-o'-the-napkin," and my larger point isn't that the DMN pays for shit, but rather that there's so much doublespeak in those numbers that it's hard to tell which end is up.

Also note that our numbers aren't even that far apart, since I was taking out an allowance for benefits when guesstimatng the salary numbers.

In other words, it was a poorly thought-out, hastily dashed off post with a basically correct conclusion, but shoddy methodology. Forunately, in a Journalism 2.0 environment, the mistake becomes part of the story and we roll on, with the errors transparent to all.

Meantime, the deathwatch rolls on.