A daily look at life on the job by TIME's Lisa Takeuchi Cullen

Trees could do the work of dead-tree journos

Today, from Gawker:

The New York Times will make all its employees feel better by installing $110,000 worth of trees in the lobby. Seriously! They announced today that they're building an "open-air birch and moss garden" on the ground floor of their fancy new building. An open-air birch and moss garden. So maybe this season's $15 million in staff cuts ("certainly not the largest that we've had," says the Times) were just to pay for the 50-foot trees and several tons of moss (moss!!) that they're shipping in from Jersey this weekend. Some intrepid citizen journalists should go document the sure-to-be-astounding installation (cranes hoisting trees over a 70-foot glass wall in the middle of midtown!). Maybe all the people laid off from their printing plants should go into the tree nursery business? Or maybe they should talk to the Sulzbergers about building them the world's largest wooden aero-plane!

7art-00015_green-pine-tree.jpg

Merry Christmas, employees! You're fired.

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