Tomorrow marks the beginning of the Jewish new year, and Wednesday marks the end of Ramadan. At the Union-Tribune, tomorrow marks the end of 25 careers in journalism, and Wednesday marks the beginning of a new challenge for San Diego's daily newspaper.
Best to let those who are leaving say what's on their mind. Here are a few examples:
Jerry Magee, who has been with the paper for 52 years, wrote this piece in Sunday's paper.
Carol Goodhue, our reader's representative, penned a poignant final column that ran today.
And finally, this from religion and ethics writer Sandi Dolbee.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
A nonprofit suffers
One of the great things about the newsroom at The San Diego Union-Tribune is a quirky little coffee bar that offers a dozen types of quality joe, every brand of decent candy ever produced (I've even seen some Big Hunks in there) and a handful of other journalist delights, including Famous Amos cookies, Bazooka Joe bubble gum and even a few varieties of granola bars. Snugged tightly in a room the size of a La Jolla walk-in closet, the coffee bar attracts not only reporters, editors and news assistants, but advertising reps from the second floor, human resources personnel from the bowels of the building and accountants and editorial writers from the fourth floor. There have even been sightings of U-T CEO Gene Bell.
Since it began, all profits generated from the sales - $230,000 to date, including $18,000 last year - have gone to the local chapter of Meals on Wheels. No one profits from this but the elderly. But with the pending buyouts of 25 staffers from the newsroom, there are fears the operation may have seen its last hurrah. The person responsible for managing the little bistro, for making sure the bills get paid and donations sent to Meals, is leaving. Medical writer Cheryl Clark, who comes in on weekends to stock up on coffee, pretzels, potato chips and biscotti, is gone Sept. 30.
The effort started out simply enough in 1990, I'm told, with the convergence of the newsroom's insatiable desire for coffee and the fleeting popularity of the television series Twin Peaks among a handful of dedicated staffers. In the early days, the bar consisted of nothing more than a coffee pot on a desk near the editor's office. But that pot soon multiplied, and before long, munchies were being offered - I hear cherry pie was the tipping point - for a price. When organizers realized they were turning a profit on the endeavor, they had a dilemma on their hands: What to do with the money.
Being fans of Twin Peaks, they asked themselves: What would Laura Palmer do? There was only one answer: Give the money to Meals on Wheels.
The effort grew. Profits rose like the price of stock in a dot.com company. A couple years later, when space became available for a real coffee bar in a small room with a sink, the Meals on Wheels effort had hit the big time.
Several people have kept the coffee bar going over the years, but none has been more instrumental than Cheryl. When the cash stops flowing but the coffee keeps going, she gets on folks to ante up. On more than a few hundred occasions, she's floated coffee and snacks on her own credit cards until she could recoup the cash by laying out a guilt trip a Jewish mother would be proud of.
Cheryl is leaving, and uncertainty about the future of the coffee bar permeates the third floor. A notice went up this morning promising the bar will be closed only for a facelift. It's unclear, however, who would oversee the operation, and the offerings won't be nearly as ample as in the past.
Since it began, all profits generated from the sales - $230,000 to date, including $18,000 last year - have gone to the local chapter of Meals on Wheels. No one profits from this but the elderly. But with the pending buyouts of 25 staffers from the newsroom, there are fears the operation may have seen its last hurrah. The person responsible for managing the little bistro, for making sure the bills get paid and donations sent to Meals, is leaving. Medical writer Cheryl Clark, who comes in on weekends to stock up on coffee, pretzels, potato chips and biscotti, is gone Sept. 30.
The effort started out simply enough in 1990, I'm told, with the convergence of the newsroom's insatiable desire for coffee and the fleeting popularity of the television series Twin Peaks among a handful of dedicated staffers. In the early days, the bar consisted of nothing more than a coffee pot on a desk near the editor's office. But that pot soon multiplied, and before long, munchies were being offered - I hear cherry pie was the tipping point - for a price. When organizers realized they were turning a profit on the endeavor, they had a dilemma on their hands: What to do with the money.
Being fans of Twin Peaks, they asked themselves: What would Laura Palmer do? There was only one answer: Give the money to Meals on Wheels.
The effort grew. Profits rose like the price of stock in a dot.com company. A couple years later, when space became available for a real coffee bar in a small room with a sink, the Meals on Wheels effort had hit the big time.
Several people have kept the coffee bar going over the years, but none has been more instrumental than Cheryl. When the cash stops flowing but the coffee keeps going, she gets on folks to ante up. On more than a few hundred occasions, she's floated coffee and snacks on her own credit cards until she could recoup the cash by laying out a guilt trip a Jewish mother would be proud of.
Cheryl is leaving, and uncertainty about the future of the coffee bar permeates the third floor. A notice went up this morning promising the bar will be closed only for a facelift. It's unclear, however, who would oversee the operation, and the offerings won't be nearly as ample as in the past.
empty shelves
Didn't seem like long ago when shelf space in the Union-Tribune newsroom was more difficult to find than an affordable flat in Manhattan. On the rare occasion when someone left the paper, reporters and editors would swoop in like vultures rushing to a corpse, slapping their business card on the vacated space, claiming it as their own. We even instituted a shelf-space protocol to ward against the bogarts - you know who you are - intent on monopolizing what was available.
No more. There's plenty of shelf space today. A veritable abundance of newsroom cabinetry. Nowadays, there's a run on boxes for the packrats who accepted the latest buyout offer to cart off the books, magazines and files that were stuffed into those shelves.
They arrive on the weekends, when it's quiet, when there won't be as many questions about their decision, when they can pack in peace, alone with their thoughts. And, suddenly, 20 years or more of reporting is gone from the newsroom. Decades more of institutional knowledge lost.
It may be a Pyrrhic victory, but I finally have some space to put my stuff.
No more. There's plenty of shelf space today. A veritable abundance of newsroom cabinetry. Nowadays, there's a run on boxes for the packrats who accepted the latest buyout offer to cart off the books, magazines and files that were stuffed into those shelves.
They arrive on the weekends, when it's quiet, when there won't be as many questions about their decision, when they can pack in peace, alone with their thoughts. And, suddenly, 20 years or more of reporting is gone from the newsroom. Decades more of institutional knowledge lost.
It may be a Pyrrhic victory, but I finally have some space to put my stuff.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
The fallout
For those of you keeping score….Here’s the latest list of journalists leaving the Union-Tribune as we continue to downsize in these challenging times. Not all of these folks are taking the buyouts. One or two were retirements, a couple left for other jobs.
The entire D.C. bureau (Finlay Lewis, George Condon Jr.,Dana Wilkie, Paul Krawzak)
Sandi Dolbee
Jerry Magee
Kirk Kenney
Ellen Bevier
Carol Goodhue
Susan Gembrowski
Gerry Braun (he took a job with the Mayor's office)
Bruce Bigelow (he accepted another job days before the buyout offer)
Liz Neeley
Cheryl Clark
Terry Rodgers
Ruth McKinnie Braun
Ed Mendel
Ed Phillips
Phil Suda
Mary James
Mike Canepa
Scott Linnett
Valerie Scher
Beth Wood
Eddie Krueger
Jean Frasier
Steve Brand
Bill Ainsworth
The entire D.C. bureau (Finlay Lewis, George Condon Jr.,Dana Wilkie, Paul Krawzak)
Sandi Dolbee
Jerry Magee
Kirk Kenney
Ellen Bevier
Carol Goodhue
Susan Gembrowski
Gerry Braun (he took a job with the Mayor's office)
Bruce Bigelow (he accepted another job days before the buyout offer)
Liz Neeley
Cheryl Clark
Terry Rodgers
Ruth McKinnie Braun
Ed Mendel
Ed Phillips
Phil Suda
Mary James
Mike Canepa
Scott Linnett
Valerie Scher
Beth Wood
Eddie Krueger
Jean Frasier
Steve Brand
Bill Ainsworth
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Psycho
When Martin Balsam's Arbogast heads into the mysterious house overlooking the Bates Motel in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic Psycho, you feel like screaming at him to turn around, sprint to his car and hightail it back to Phoenix. Nothing good is going to happen here.
It's the same feeling I sometimes get in working with young college interns who regularly arrive in our newsroom, each one of them every bit as inquisitive as Arbogast. I often find myself asking whether I should encourage them to turn around and hightail it back to their dorm instead of tutoring them on the finer points of reporting and writing.
I'm not the only one who feels that way.
"People who I don't even know walk by my desk and tell me to get out while I can," said one of this summer's crop of Union-Tribune interns, University of Chicago sophomore Rachel Cromidas.
But Rachel is not alone. Every summer, and often in the fall and spring, interns walk through our doors, determined to make it in an industry that many say is dying. Aren't they learning anything in college? Are they stupid or something?
"I don't see it as a dying industry," said Rebecca Go, who served as a metro intern in the spring of 2008 while finishing up her senior year at Point Loma Nazarene University. "I see it as a changing industry."
For those of us who have little hope, who wake up ready for another day, only to get a dose of reality from Romenesko, I introduce you to the future of journalism.
Say hello to Edgar Segura, Cal State Hayward.
"It's scary, sure, but there are a lot of possibilities."
Some of the possibilites are outside of the box. Take Adam Loberstein, a UC Davis student who spent the summer writing for the Union-Tribune's Currents section. If Adam never lands a paying newspaper job, he's sure to do quite well with his Web site . It's a Fantasy Baseball player's dream, a site that is siphoning revenue from local newspapers.
One former intern, who asked that she not be identified because of NPR policy, graduated with a bachelor's degree in political science for UCSD and a master's degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She was one of the better interns we had, writing several stories that landed on the cover of the metro section and a couple that earned their way onto A1.
After earning her master's, this young woman found a summer internship at The Dallas Morning News - just in time to witness one in a string of layoffs and buyouts.
"I got to see the staff eviscerated," she said matter-of-factly, like an experienced cops reporter talking about the latest homicide.
Our intrepid reporter returned to California, where she hoped to land a job with The Los Angeles Times. But they, too, were in slash-and-burn mode.
She didn't give up. She landed a job with NPR doing some freelance work. She's also writing for magazines and dabbling in other areas of journalism.
"I've managed to cobble together a decent living."
So how does she see the future? Was that master's from Berkeley worth the paper it's written on?
"We need newspapers," she said. "We need good journalists."
Rebecca agrees.
"It's quite scary that the industry is declining," said the staff writer at the San Diego Daily Transcript. "But I'm fairly optimistic. There's going to always be a need for journalism. It's changing. We may be going online, but the need will always be there."
It's the same feeling I sometimes get in working with young college interns who regularly arrive in our newsroom, each one of them every bit as inquisitive as Arbogast. I often find myself asking whether I should encourage them to turn around and hightail it back to their dorm instead of tutoring them on the finer points of reporting and writing.
I'm not the only one who feels that way.
"People who I don't even know walk by my desk and tell me to get out while I can," said one of this summer's crop of Union-Tribune interns, University of Chicago sophomore Rachel Cromidas.
But Rachel is not alone. Every summer, and often in the fall and spring, interns walk through our doors, determined to make it in an industry that many say is dying. Aren't they learning anything in college? Are they stupid or something?
"I don't see it as a dying industry," said Rebecca Go, who served as a metro intern in the spring of 2008 while finishing up her senior year at Point Loma Nazarene University. "I see it as a changing industry."
For those of us who have little hope, who wake up ready for another day, only to get a dose of reality from Romenesko, I introduce you to the future of journalism.
Say hello to Edgar Segura, Cal State Hayward.
"It's scary, sure, but there are a lot of possibilities."
Some of the possibilites are outside of the box. Take Adam Loberstein, a UC Davis student who spent the summer writing for the Union-Tribune's Currents section. If Adam never lands a paying newspaper job, he's sure to do quite well with his Web site . It's a Fantasy Baseball player's dream, a site that is siphoning revenue from local newspapers.
One former intern, who asked that she not be identified because of NPR policy, graduated with a bachelor's degree in political science for UCSD and a master's degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She was one of the better interns we had, writing several stories that landed on the cover of the metro section and a couple that earned their way onto A1.
After earning her master's, this young woman found a summer internship at The Dallas Morning News - just in time to witness one in a string of layoffs and buyouts.
"I got to see the staff eviscerated," she said matter-of-factly, like an experienced cops reporter talking about the latest homicide.
Our intrepid reporter returned to California, where she hoped to land a job with The Los Angeles Times. But they, too, were in slash-and-burn mode.
She didn't give up. She landed a job with NPR doing some freelance work. She's also writing for magazines and dabbling in other areas of journalism.
"I've managed to cobble together a decent living."
So how does she see the future? Was that master's from Berkeley worth the paper it's written on?
"We need newspapers," she said. "We need good journalists."
Rebecca agrees.
"It's quite scary that the industry is declining," said the staff writer at the San Diego Daily Transcript. "But I'm fairly optimistic. There's going to always be a need for journalism. It's changing. We may be going online, but the need will always be there."
Monday, September 15, 2008
Losing your voice
Respected as one of the best political reporters in San Diego County before he became one of the better newspaper columnists in the country, Gerry Braun walked into work this morning and notified his bosses at The San Diego Union-Tribune that he was leaving. Immediately. He wasn't taking a buyout, he was taking the initiative. He had a new job with the Mayor's office. Because of the inherent conflict with his column, Gerry left immediately.
When Gerry walked out out of the newsroom, the Union-Tribune lost its voice.
I've known Gerry for nearly three decades. One of my favorite Gerry memories came when he was covering the 1982 election in the old 43rd Congressional District that spread across northern San Diego County and into southern Orange County. The frontrunner in that race was Johnnie Crean, the privileged son - some would call him the spoiled rich kid - of John C. Crean, founder of Fleetwood Enterprises, one of the larger manufacturers of mobile and motor homes in the country.
Gerry was working for a small daily, the old Times-Advocate, and was given a generous amount of time - considering the size of the paper - to profile Mr. Crean. After several days of working on this project, Gerry confessed he had nothing to show for it but a classic case of writer's block.
He took care of the problem by going to Dodger Stadium. Some 100 miles to the north.
Whether Gerry was pulling our leg or not when he went to L.A., I don't know for sure. He is, after all, a pretty good poker player. But the story often motivated me when I was stuck on a story on which I had too much time to report, and Major League Baseball profited from it. If it worked for Gerry, I told myself, it could work for me.
That's because what came of Gerry's big adventure was one of the better profiles ever published in the small Escondido daily, which at the time was chock full of talented writers.
Gerry's writing only got better, and reporters often sought his advice on how to phrase a story even after he left his job as a writing coach and became a metro columnist in the spring of 2007.
Over the past 18 months, Gerry took pride in siding with the underdog. He wrote about a airlines treating their passengers like dirt and politicians taking people for granted. He wrote about developers and their ridiculous projects. And he wrote about people losing their jobs to new technology.
Not long ago, Gerry wrote about a mapmaker who was going out of business, no longer needed in a world of GPS devices and online services such as MapQuest and Google Earth.
Perhaps now we're suffering the same fate. After three recent rounds of buyouts and one round of layoffs, we're losing our soul.
Now that Gerry's gone, we've lost our voice.
When Gerry walked out out of the newsroom, the Union-Tribune lost its voice.
I've known Gerry for nearly three decades. One of my favorite Gerry memories came when he was covering the 1982 election in the old 43rd Congressional District that spread across northern San Diego County and into southern Orange County. The frontrunner in that race was Johnnie Crean, the privileged son - some would call him the spoiled rich kid - of John C. Crean, founder of Fleetwood Enterprises, one of the larger manufacturers of mobile and motor homes in the country.
Gerry was working for a small daily, the old Times-Advocate, and was given a generous amount of time - considering the size of the paper - to profile Mr. Crean. After several days of working on this project, Gerry confessed he had nothing to show for it but a classic case of writer's block.
He took care of the problem by going to Dodger Stadium. Some 100 miles to the north.
Whether Gerry was pulling our leg or not when he went to L.A., I don't know for sure. He is, after all, a pretty good poker player. But the story often motivated me when I was stuck on a story on which I had too much time to report, and Major League Baseball profited from it. If it worked for Gerry, I told myself, it could work for me.
That's because what came of Gerry's big adventure was one of the better profiles ever published in the small Escondido daily, which at the time was chock full of talented writers.
Gerry's writing only got better, and reporters often sought his advice on how to phrase a story even after he left his job as a writing coach and became a metro columnist in the spring of 2007.
Over the past 18 months, Gerry took pride in siding with the underdog. He wrote about a airlines treating their passengers like dirt and politicians taking people for granted. He wrote about developers and their ridiculous projects. And he wrote about people losing their jobs to new technology.
Not long ago, Gerry wrote about a mapmaker who was going out of business, no longer needed in a world of GPS devices and online services such as MapQuest and Google Earth.
Perhaps now we're suffering the same fate. After three recent rounds of buyouts and one round of layoffs, we're losing our soul.
Now that Gerry's gone, we've lost our voice.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Selling our soul
On the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, reporters and editors at The San Diego Union-Tribune learned the newsroom would lose writers, wordsmiths and some pretty damn good journalists with a combined several hundred years worth of experience to the latest round of buyouts.
Susan Gembrowski, who gave up a teaching career for the passion of journalism, is among them. So is Cheryl Clark, who many in the profession regard as one of the most knowledgeable and dedicated medical writers in the business. Terry Rodgers, a Lakers and Dodgers diehard who has been around as long as dirt and whose encyclopedic memory has been vital to reporters young and old alike, is heading for the proverbial door. Gone is Ellen Bevier, a voracious reader and stickler for precision and accuracy who could probably write a history of San Diego County without referring to notes. Ruth McKinnie, who has held so many posts at the paper she could publish it herself, is leaving too. Carol Goodhue, a Stanford grad who has recruited our interns and served as our ombudsman, is also packing it in.
People don't get into the newspaper business to make money. Sure, over the past decade or so, many of us have become firmly ensconced in the shrinking middle class. But we're in it because of a belief, perhaps a little misguided, that we can make a difference in this world, that we can root out corruption, shine a light on folks who are doing good and help illuminate a society that would be blind - and easy prey - were it not for a free press. The people who are leaving were vital in covering the historic wildfires of 2003 and 2007, unearthed incompetence that led to needless deaths at area hospitals and kept hundreds of thousands of parents informed about how the public education system is serving - and failing - their kids.
But the newspaper industry remains a business, and if business stop growing, they die. Our industry is in intensive care.
"There's too much uncertainty," one of the prematurely retired said, fighting back tears after a 5 p.m. deadline had passed for her to rescind her forms telling the company she would leave Sept. 30. "I wanted to leave when I had a choice."
What are my soon-to-be former co-workers going to do once they're out the door? Who knows?
"I don't know what I'm going to do," an editor said. "I don't know if I made the right decision."
One thing is certain. Come Sept. 30, this company will once again lose a lot of good people. People who fought not for themselves, but for the public good. People who worked at all hours of the night not because they loved being in a newsroom or out reporting, but because it was their duty.
"This place is going to have no character," said a reporter who works with me, upon learning about who was leaving. "This place is going to have no soul."
Susan Gembrowski, who gave up a teaching career for the passion of journalism, is among them. So is Cheryl Clark, who many in the profession regard as one of the most knowledgeable and dedicated medical writers in the business. Terry Rodgers, a Lakers and Dodgers diehard who has been around as long as dirt and whose encyclopedic memory has been vital to reporters young and old alike, is heading for the proverbial door. Gone is Ellen Bevier, a voracious reader and stickler for precision and accuracy who could probably write a history of San Diego County without referring to notes. Ruth McKinnie, who has held so many posts at the paper she could publish it herself, is leaving too. Carol Goodhue, a Stanford grad who has recruited our interns and served as our ombudsman, is also packing it in.
People don't get into the newspaper business to make money. Sure, over the past decade or so, many of us have become firmly ensconced in the shrinking middle class. But we're in it because of a belief, perhaps a little misguided, that we can make a difference in this world, that we can root out corruption, shine a light on folks who are doing good and help illuminate a society that would be blind - and easy prey - were it not for a free press. The people who are leaving were vital in covering the historic wildfires of 2003 and 2007, unearthed incompetence that led to needless deaths at area hospitals and kept hundreds of thousands of parents informed about how the public education system is serving - and failing - their kids.
But the newspaper industry remains a business, and if business stop growing, they die. Our industry is in intensive care.
"There's too much uncertainty," one of the prematurely retired said, fighting back tears after a 5 p.m. deadline had passed for her to rescind her forms telling the company she would leave Sept. 30. "I wanted to leave when I had a choice."
What are my soon-to-be former co-workers going to do once they're out the door? Who knows?
"I don't know what I'm going to do," an editor said. "I don't know if I made the right decision."
One thing is certain. Come Sept. 30, this company will once again lose a lot of good people. People who fought not for themselves, but for the public good. People who worked at all hours of the night not because they loved being in a newsroom or out reporting, but because it was their duty.
"This place is going to have no character," said a reporter who works with me, upon learning about who was leaving. "This place is going to have no soul."
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Ruminations of a dinosaur
Barely more than three years ago, the newspaper I've spent most my waking hours at the past several years employed some 1,800 people. Today, we're down to about 1,200. I'm not good with math, which is why I became a journalist, but that's a decline of more than 33 percent. Now we're going to lose another batch of folks, including nearly three dozen in the newsroom, through yet another round of buyouts - the third in three years. As The Clash so famously asked back in the early 1980s, the question for me becomes: Should I stay or should I go?
It's a question being asked at newsrooms across America. It's a question thousands of reporters, editors, layout artists and news assistants never thought they'd ask. It's a question I'm getting tired of being thrown my way.
I suppose it could be worse. My company could make it easier on us by calling 30 or 40 newsroom employees into HR and simply tell us we're being laid off. The cord would be cut, unceremoniously true, but at least I wouldn't have to worry about collecting unemployment benefits.
Problem is, the economy sucks. Government economists are still trying to determine if we're officially in a recession, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out things haven't been this bad since the 1970s. The unemployment rate just rocketed past what the Associated Press calls the "psychologically important" level of 6 percent, but let's get real. It's much worse than that. In this new economy, so many people have gone back to school or stopped looking for work that my guess is we're well beyond 7 percent. If the same economic data used for determining inflation rates back when Jimmy Carter was president were used today, the Consumer Price Index would be well beyond 8 percent. I've been looking for work for several weeks, and let me tell you, there's nothing out there.
So here I am. Waiting for yet another shoe to drop, hanging on in the meantime, wondering if the economy will improve by the time the next round of buyouts - or layoffs - arrive. Meanwhile, I figure it would be healthy to write about how one journalist, with nearly 30 years of professional experience - is dealing with the dilemma.
I call it ruminations of a dinosaur.
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