John Koblin got his hands on the New York Times' employee buyout offers—which handily include a breakdown of the numbers of employees in every one of the paper's departments. Behold something massive beyond reason!

The exact numbers of the NYT's departments aren't quite as cloaked in mystery as the New Yorker's masthead, for example, but it is hard to get up-to-date figures. Until now! The striking thing, of course, is just how many people it takes to put this paper out. ("Takes" is the wrong word. How many people they use). Some of the biggies:

Reporters at Metro: 50
Size of Business Desk: 85
Size of Washington Bureau: 45
Total size of Art Department: 113
Size of Metro: 103

The Metro desk appears to be the paper's biggest, as we've always heard. Fifty reporters. More than enough to put out an entire newspaper in a third-tier city. Think about that while also thinking about the meager size of Metro's space in the NYT Some of the paper's sections seem reasonable, or even shoestring—Dining and Week in Review both have staffs of five. So why does the Book Review—also a weekly section largely written by freelancers—need 14 editors?

It's a mystery. But we know 100 people will be gone from the newsroom by the end of the year. And we'll probably never see numbers this high at the NYT again.
[Full list at the NYO. Pic: AP]