The Dallas Morning News will grant buyouts to about 30 newsroom employees as part of an effort to create a more digital newsroom, according to a staff memo from editor Mike Wilson obtained by D Magazine:
In the weeks and months after this buyout, we will add positions back to the newsroom, with a focus on hiring outstanding digital journalists. Adding new digital skills will make us more competitive in a fast-changing journalism marketplace now and in the future.
Wilson joined the Dallas Morning News early this year from ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight. In an interview with Keranews, Wilson said the newspaper needed to jettison “old notions of what our readers need”:
I think what we need to throw out are some old notions of what our readers need. We just have to be more responsive to what the audience wants. I think the tradition in newspapers has been that we have set the agenda and we’ve told readers what we think they want to know. I think we need to come down off of that mountain a little bit and ask people, involve people in the conversation a little bit more.
Buyouts will be offered to 167 newsroom employees “whose age and years of service total at least 60 years,” according to the memo.
