Woodward and the Post buyouts
May 28th, 2008 by Wayne Garcia in Media Watch, The Business of MSM
From our sister publication, the Washington City Paper, comes the tale of Watergate hero Bob Woodward’s decision to take a buyout from the Washington Post, along with about 100 other Posties:
The buyout gives the most senior Post staffers an exit payment of two times their final salary. On that basis, Woodward would get a check for $20,000, or enough for a 2008 Chrysler Sebring. He is 65 and started at the Post in 1971.
Yet there’s an interesting wrinkle in Woodward’s package: That $10,000 salary? It represents a voluntary pay cut that took effect in mid-2006. Prior to that, Woodward earned a salary commensurate with his title as a Post assistant managing editor, about $180,000. If his exit payment is calculated on that basis, he’d get $360,000 via the buyout.
The biz people at the paper are now trying to figure out whether to give Woodward the small payout or the large payout.
It all makes for a compelling case study in corporate ethics. Here’s why: The current round of Post buyouts is the third that Woodward has evaluated this decade. He was tempted by the previous offer, which offered similar inducements and came across his desk in 2006.
But he was convinced by Post management to stick around, and so passed up the big payday. And what a payday it would have been. First, Woodward would have gotten a $360,000 lump-sum payment, and over the past two years he would have raked in $160,000 in retirement payouts.
But instead of taking that early retirement plan, Woodward insisted on a pay cut.
Two years later, along comes a brand new buyout package, which may well be the last such opportunity for Post veterans. If the company goes with a strict calculation of his salary, he’ll go home with the $20,000 and will have lost about a half-million dollars.
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