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."
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2 comments:
Even though I had heard almost all of these names as possible candidates for "voluntary separation," it's still stunning to see such fine journalists listed all together as leaving.
Imagine the newspaper they could put out!
I cannot imagine the newsroom without any of these scribes.
It breaks my heart to see what is happening to the U-T and to the newspaper industry as a whole. When I was little, all I wanted to do was be a journalist when I grew up - and I had that opportunity at the U-T for almost 23 years. I'm one of the fortunate ones who found something else that I loved to do before the newspaper got to this point. I wish everyone who is leaving, and everyone who is staying, the best of luck.
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