Tightening of space and staff by attrition are periodic givens, even pre-Internet. It doesn't have a huge traumatic effect on a big staff unless the staff perceives it as a monumental scaling back of the paper's overall ambition to be one of the nation's best papers, at which point ambitious people start to leave en masse and are replaced by people just happy to be there. I doubt that's what we'll see at the WP. It's only been a few years since the paper offered mass buyouts and then quickly responded with some very aggressive hiring, especially in sports.
A lot depends on how well-managed the place was to begin with. I've been on some lean staffs that were not badly injured by staff cuts because management was accustomed to making every person and every dollar count, so they were on top of things and knew where cuts would be the least destructive. And then I've been on some bloated staffs on which maybe 25 percent of the people did little or no work, but upper management was so out to lunch that they didn't know where the fat was and so they just tried to hit every department equally, which is stupid. I worked one place that cut about 75 newsroom positions by attrition, and you got to see some people have to put in an honest day's work for the first time in years. I know that sounds mean, but I have to say I enjoyed that part of it. The good thing about lean times on lazy papers is that priorities change, and management begins to value a person's productivity over whose ass they kiss.
