threatenedjournalist

Inexcusable

2009-07-15T22:33:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, while working as an editor at another paper, I came across a letter published on the op-ed page that advocated hatred toward gays and lesbians and blamed them for the downfall of society. It was an especially appalling letter, and it had no business being in a newspaper.

I fired off a letter to the publisher that, in essence, said I would resign rather than work at a publication that promoted hatred toward a particularly vulnerable group. Everyone, I noted, was entitled to their opinion, even uninformed bigots. That did not, however, mean we had to print it.

The publisher apologized. Never again did I read such hateful trash published by a reputable newspaper company.

Until now.

Every day, newspaper Web sites, in an otherwise laudable attempt at increasing readership, encourage folks to comment on a particular story. Some sites, such as the New York Times', diligently monitor the posts, often before they are allowed to be published. But too many sites are operated by people who feel that comments should flow freely. Why, they argue, should we censor hatred as though it doesn't exist? If a post is untenably inflammatory, readers can punch a button reporting the comment. A monitor, often someone doing several other jobs simultaneously, might find the time to strike it.

That simply won't do. Why? Because comments laced with invective against particular groups can lead to unspeakable horror. Or have we already forgotten about the Holocaust?

Today, The San Diego Union-Tribune's site posted an Associated Press story about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and her infamous "wise Latina" speeches. The floodgates were opened for all the racists in the world. Read for yourself:

Why do Latinas not Mexicans women peake at 15 years of age. After 18 they gey wore out.

or...

Wise Latina. What an oxymoron.

and...

how presumptive to assume that latinas are wise?

Nothing I say or do will keep these morons from being their bigoted selves. But we don't owe anyone the courtesy of spreading their ignorance. Fact is, it is irresponsible to publish such comments. And shame on those who allow this hatred be spread.

The thrill is gone

2009-06-30T20:52:00.000-07:00

How bad can it get? Apparently plenty, as Gannett Co. announces it will cut up to 2,000 more jobs in the coming week. That's in addition to the 3,600 other positions already lost. On a lesser scale, the St. Paul Pioneer Press continues to shed jobs from its incredibly shrinking work force, and Freedom Communications (Orange County Register) boss Burl Osborne (formerly of the Belo's Dallas Morning News) announces across-the-board paycuts of 5 percent. (I wonder what ol' Burl is getting paid after the cuts?)

And my friends wonder why I took a break from blogging about the business.

But the time off has led me to reflect on my three decades in journalism. In particular, it has led me to reflect about those incredibly long hours at my first job, a weekly in northern San Diego County that no longer exists.

We had a tiny staff - three news reporters, a photographer a graphic artist and an editor - and the pay was shit. $150 a week, if I recall correctly, which came out to about $2.50 an hour. But I was young and couldn't believe people would pay me to write. Reporters never hesitated to ask for or offer suggestions on how to phrase a sentence, paragraph or story. We never worried about being criticized for taking chances. And we never thought twice about our commitment to the profession.

Paying rent, buying gas and eating even the basics was sometimes a challenge on a salary that paid less than the minimum wage, but it didn't matter. We loved our job. We loved what we did. And we dreamed about the future.

Today, with the future very much in doubt, I often find myself wondering if the thrill is gone.

Bummer

2009-06-16T20:14:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile, but when the NBA playoffs kick in and the Lakers go on a run, my priorities change. Now that the postseason has ended with yet another NBA title for the purple and gold, I'm back. At least until the Dodgers reach the postseason.

On a more somber note...

When you spend 30 years in an industry, you make a lot of friends and even more acquaintances. And never in my years in newspapers have I seen a greater sense of despair among journalists than today. People who were commited to this business just months ago are looking for work elsewhere. Reporters who have spent years refining their craft are ready to take their skills someplace they feel they will be appreciated. And to be brutally honest, much of it is due to the utter lack of leadership in a profession that failed to see the potential impact of the Web and compounded that failure with inaction once it became apparent.

People are fed up. Scared. Resigned to a future in which they feel the priority is rapidly shifting to quantity over quality. And until they see some sort of leadership from folks who get paid a heckuva lot more than me, the exodus will continue.

Me? I'm still celebrating another Lakers championship.

Besides, it isn't all bad news. According to this story, the Union-Tribune's Web site is one of the better ones around. Or at least not one of the worst.

Goodbye

2009-05-22T21:13:00.000-07:00

His first job in the industry was delivering newspapers. That led to a job delivering newspapers to the guys delivering newspapers. That was followed by a job as an inserter in the packaging department, which led to a job in the pressroom. A year or so later, he was working in the color separation lab before landing a position as a staff photographer. Before long he moved on to The San Diego Union-Tribune, where he served as photo editor for the past several years.

Mike Franklin was a lifer. And a leader. A couple weeks after I began working at the old Times-Advocate in Escondido, the editors needed someone to fill a Friday night shift on the cops beat and decided I was ready for it. I had never covered cops before, and while I was perusing a cheat sheet that listed the various police radio codes, the scanner began lighting up with reports of a hostage situation and a police chase. I was like a deer in headlights. Suddenly the code for "shots fired" blared across the radio, and Mike - then a staff photographer at the paper - appeared like a vision and calmly said, "Let's go."

I had no idea where the hell we were going, and before I could grab a Thomas Bros. guide, Mike pulled me by the arm and said he'd drive. In no time, we were in his Jeep en route to a cul de sac, where police had just killed a bank robber - and his hostage. When we got there, the bank robber's body was in a pickup. The body of his hostage - a young woman - lay in the middle of the street.

Cops weren't talking and Mike wanted me out of the way. "Why don't you go talk to those guys and see if they know anything," Mike said, pointing to a pair of middle-age men in oil-covered clothes. So I did. Good thing, too. Turns out they had been working on their car when they saw the drama unfold, leading to the fateful decision of an officer to shoot the hostage as she tried to escape, in the mistaken belief that she was in cahoots with the robber.

I tell this story because Mike is no longer working in the industry. He was given a layoff notice a couple weeks back and his last day at work was today. He'll probably freelance for awhile, maybe longer. But the newsroom for me will never be the same. When I saw Mike, I often remembered that crazy evening some 26 years ago, an evening that made me grow up - fast - as a reporter.

Mike was one of nearly 50 people in editorial who lost their job in the recent round of downsizing, and each of them left their mark on this industry. Each of them helped make their community better. None of them deserved to become victims of a dying industry. Some of them left yesterday. Most left today.

I'll miss them all.

It's all Vin Scully's fault

2009-05-20T20:35:00.000-07:00

As I sit here watching the Dodgers on MLB.com while listening to Vin Scully call the game, I'm reminded of why I decided to get into journalism in the first place. Because of baseball.

Back when I was a kid, I didn't just listen to the games. I lived them. I kept score. Meticulously. I jotted down notes. And as soon as a contest was over, I would plop a piece of paper into my old Olympia typewriter and start writing a game story - on deadline. In the morning, I'd check my piece with what the hacks were printing in the Los Angeles Times. It was then that I realized I could make a living as a sportswriter. It was then I realized that I wanted to be a newspaperman.

Somewhere along the way, sportswriting gave way to covering city councils, school boards and the police beat, but it was the Dodgers, and more specifically Vin Scully, who inspired me into this line of work.

It was a choice I never regretted. Not even with the apocalypse upon us. But I find myself much more subdued than I ever was. I find myself often thinking of the thousands of journalists who have been laid off over the past few years, many of them friends of mine. And I find myself often thinking of the dozens of co-workers who will soon be leaving from the Union-Tribune.

To prepare for deadline writing by listening to the radio back when Maury Wills was still playing shortstop for the Dodgers requires a passion that you cannot fake. Yet what is happening today is sorely testing that passion, and I have found myself wondering if there are other careers - teaching perhaps -that I should transition to before my middle age years are up.

But then I listen to Vinny and fall back into my bedroom, circa 1970, typewriter atop a milk carton, stubby little fingers flailing away. That I never put the teddy bears in a row of chairs and pretended to present lessons in history underscores where my passion lies.

A journalist I am. For now. And it's all Vin Scully's fault.

I don't like Mondays

2009-05-11T21:15:00.001-07:00

To all my colleagues at The Union-Tribune who will be out of work come July, fear not. There is ample opportunity for working journalists, as evidenced by a piece in The New York Times today about Chevron hiring a former award-winning CNN reporter to do its own investigative piece on the company once the conglomerate discovered 60 minutes was looking at some of its questionable actions in Ecuador.

OK, it was a puff piece fronting as news. But it's work.

Speaking of work, looks like it's not only newspapers and television stations that are going down the toilet. Playboy magazine today announced it lost nearly $14 million in the first quarter this year, yet another victim of free content on the Internet. Ad revenue plummets. Subscribers flee. Subscription rates rise. More with less. Stop me if you've heard this before.

And on a related note, the News Corp., among the leaders in the industry to force people to pay for stories that are damn expensive to produce, says it will introduce a micropayment system, enabling readers to pay for individual articles, instead of a full subscription. Good luck.

And it's only Monday.

Noticed

2009-05-07T20:28:00.000-07:00

The commute to work this morning was similar to the commute to work every other morning: Hop on the trolley at the Alvarado station near La Mesa, plug in the Ipod and pull out The New York Times. On this morning, a particular story caught my attention, a story about the mental anguish that managers at small and medium sized businesses endure when deciding who will lose their jobs when layoffs become necessary.

"Charlie Thomas III, vice president of Shuqualak Lumber in Shuqualak, Miss., had to dismiss nearly a quarter of his work force, which used to number about 160 employees, at the end of October. He also dismissed a handful of workers in January.

He wrote out a speech for the announcement in October in front of his men, whom he told to gather in the lumberyard. Midway through delivering it, Mr. Thomas had to stop and go back into his office to compose himself.

“I couldn’t get it out,” he said. “It just killed my soul.” "

It was a poignant piece detailing how layoffs at small businesses were more personal - like telling a brother he was being let go. But what was especially intriguing to me was a discussion about the factors that are considered when managers decide who to lay off.

"In the management team meetings, each member, armed with an employee roster by department, suggested workers to be cut. A vote was taken on each worker. Some got reprieves; others were added to the list.

A premium was put on workers with diversified skills. One employee was saved because he happened to have a commercial driver’s license, so he could make deliveries as well.

There were impossible dilemmas: what to do about two equally valued employees when one was single and the other had a family to support; how to balance an employee’s talent against his cost."

It's been well known for months that layoffs at my job with The San Diego Union-Tribune were imminent. We were informed of that fact earlier this year. And, in case anyone forgot, Louis Samson of new U-T owner Platinum Equity said as much in a question-and-answer piece on the front page of the paper the day after the sale was completed.

"We expect some immediate restructuring to stabilize the business in the near term. But the ultimate goal here is to make only those cuts necessary to stabilize the business, and then to focus on growing revenue," Samson was quoted as saying.

So I knew my job was on the line. After reading the New York Times piece, I knew that my future had been discussed by managers with much more authority than me. After reading this piece, I felt I had a little more understanding of the factors that would go into deciding whether I would soon have to start looking for employment elsewhere.

As it happened, I learned my fate 15 minutes after arriving at work. Layoffs were being announced. People were being pulled into offices for private discussions. Before the day would be over, more than 190 people - including about 40 in the newsroom - were told they would be gone in 60 days.

Many, many of my friends were told they were being laid off. Many, many of my friends shed more than a few tears. Many, many of my friends will soon no longer be threatened journalists, but instead former ones.

The omen

2009-05-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

Nearly nine years after moving to paradise to work for The San Diego Union-Tribune, I am no longer employed by The Copley Press. The sale of the U-T to Platinum Equity has been completed, it was announced today, and folks from City Hall to southeastern San Diego are wondering what vision the private equity firm has for the local institution.

What does this mean to me? Being a person of simple tastes, I don't ask for much. And while discussing the sale in the company gym not long after it was announced, my request was simple: I just hope Platinum puts an end to the deferred maintenance on the treadmills and stair masters and fixes the damn things.

Fifteen minutes after I left, someone was in the gym working on the machines.

A good omen, indeed.

Who cares?

2009-05-03T20:46:00.001-07:00

Schools in California are being directed to shut down for up to 14 days if any of their students comes down with the swine flu. So what happens when the swine flu affects a reporter? An editor? a pressroom operator? Will that newspaper shut its offices down in the public interest? Or does anyone care if a bunch of journalists get infected by some mutated virus?

Just wondering.

Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

2009-04-20T20:48:00.000-07:00

Half full or half empty? I suppose that depends on if you're drinking the Kool-Aid or not.

Today is to journalism what the Academy Awards is to the movie industry. Pulitzer Prize day. Win a Pulitzer, and you've been validated as the best in your field. For small and mid-size papers, earning a Pulitzer means you are as good as anyone, New York Times be damned. It is an honor that bestows far more than a $10,000 award and a citation from Columbia University, it is an honor that instills pride in your work, your paper, your choice of a profession.

And despite the constant drumbeat of dreadful news raining on the industry for well over a year, today was no different. Despite the constant drumbeat of dreadful news raining on the industry for well over a year, the Pulitzer Committee's selection for its 2009 awards reassures us that great journalism endures, that great journalism will never die, that great journalism is as important to this country as any bill coming out of Congress.

So much for the Kool-Aid.

A Pulitzer for local reporting (Detroit Free Press) went to a newspaper hanging on for dear life - a newspaper facing such financial turmoil that just last month it cut back its home delivery to but three days a week. Another Pulitizer for local reporting (East Valley Tribune of Mesa, Ariz.) was shared by a reporter who was laid off before he could find out he earned journalism's most prestigious prize. A third went to the editorial cartoonist of a paper (The San Diego Union-Tribune) that is in the midst of being sold to a Beverly Hills private equity firm.

Me? I've always liked Kool-Aid. Fact is, this is our second Pulitzer in four years, not bad for a paper that during that time has survived three rounds of buyouts (or is it four? I lose track) and is on the brink of a second round of layoffs. The recipient, Steve Breen is the best in the business. And as long as he doesn't take a buyout or suffer a layoff, we have a pretty good chance of winning another one soon.

...Speaking of layoffs
No word yet on whether I'll be working at my cush 50-60-hour-per-week, do-the-work-of-two-people job much longer. Everything I hear is that layoffs won't come until after Platinum's purchase becomes final. Which, sources say, will be announced come Monday, April 27.

Carpetbaggers

2009-04-16T20:28:00.001-07:00

One thing you could say about the never-ending exodus of experienced reporters and editors heading for new careers as flaks - er, communication directors - for governmental agencies and businesses is that the quality of spokespeople is going to improve dramatically.

A few weeks ago, Tony Manalotos, a San Diego Union-Tribune reporter who covered crime and public safety, went to work as a communication specialist for City Councilman Kevin Faulconer. And today, I find out that Teri Somers, who has done a superb job as a business reporter covering the biotech industry, is leaving to become communications director for Biocom, which calls itself "the largest regional life-science association in the world."

Tony has already made an impact on Faulconer getting his message out more effectively. I suspect Teri will do at least as well with Biocom.

A contrarian view

2009-04-08T16:03:00.000-07:00

Years of right-wing media bashing that began long before Spiro Agnew spewed his "nattering nabobs of negativism" nonsense, combined with a recession that shows no sign of loosening its grip, an endless march to the Internet and an utter lack of leadership in the upper ranks of management have left journalism - or more precisely, newspapers - in the precarious state we find ourselves in today. Tens of thousands of professionals have been laid off or bought out in the past year. Wages are being slashed, furloughs imposed. Newspapers are filing for bankruptcy or shutting down entirely. Yet a new generation of reporters and editors are eagerly preparing to join the ranks.

What gives?

That question was one of the motivations for me accepting an invitation to speak to an investigative journalism class at San Diego State University today. I figured I could learn as much from the 10 or so upper division students as they could from me.

What I found was refreshing. Young, intelligent, motivated students disgusted with the injustices the masses endure and a desire to do something about it. What I found was a young woman who has scoured search warrant affidavits and other court records for an investigative story on crooked Border Patrol agents - all part of a class project. What I found was another young student looking into the way nightclubs are manipulating their clientele to attract more money into their establishments - all part of a class project.

What I found was a refusal to give up on the profession.

And what, they all wanted to know, did I think about our future?

I'm a contrarian, someone who is not convinced newspapers are done for, that our challenges are as much rooted in the economic calamity every industry is facing as it is on Craigslist. And I'm a firm believer that regardless of the vehicle - be it newspapers, the Web or some yet-to-be discovered medium - there will always be a demand for the skills a good journalist must develop. There will always be a demand for good storytellers. And there will always be a demand for people who can write. Clearly.

The times they are a changin'

2009-04-06T17:36:00.000-07:00

AP on Monday says it will demand payment from the likes of Yahoo and Google and so-called news aggregators, or else. About time. Yahoo, Google, the Huffington Post and other sites have been getting fat - or at least fatter - thanks to the free labor it gets from newspapers across the country. Time to pay up, boys.

Good times, bad times

2009-03-26T20:46:00.002-07:00

Not having endured an economic crisis as dour as the recession ravaging the country (and, no, neither 1973-74 or 1980-82 comes close, regardless of what the government numbers say), I've been taking every prudent step necessary to prepare for the worst. Credit cards were scissored into tiny little pieces months ago. I've yet to spend the money on gas or a hotel stay to visit my oldest son at UC Davis. We've taken our youngest out of after-school care and are leaving her to care for herself at home in the afternoon. And vacation time has been used not as an opportunity to relax, but as a bulwark against a possible job loss; I've been saving it up and have just about maxed out at 8 weeks. But it still feels like a losing battle, even though I'm far more fortunate than the millions of Americans who have lost their job the past two years.

The most recent bit of bad news came today, when my employer informed me that the pay cuts (and elimination of 401(k) matches and the spike in health insurance premiums) announced in January would continue. Indefinitely. The memo didn't quite use those terms, but that was the message, nonetheless.

The cost-saving measures "will be extended pending the sale of the Union-Tribune (expected to be finalized in April) and the new ownership’s evaluation of the cost structure in the current business environment," it read.

So now I'm looking at more ways to cut. To prepare for what sometimes seems like the inevitable.

2009-03-25T20:53:00.000-07:00

Platinum is in the building. Or so friends tell me, which is to be expected, since the company will officially own The U-T as early as early April. They dress sharp, ask a lot of good questions and are expected to be around for at least a few days, sources say.

Our metro columnist is already getting off on the right foot.

Meanwhile, everyone I know is wondering if they'll still have a job in a few weeks. Not that the uncertainty has become an albatross. If today's paper was any indication, (quality writing, more than a few exclusives, impressive layout, and a whole lotta color ads!) we remain a pretty damn good publication, easily the best source of news in the region.

In other news today, San Diego News Network has officially launched its new Web site, showing once again that not everyone believes that journalism is a dying industry. It's clean and easy to navigate. Let's hope it doesn't become as obsessed as some publications are (hello, San Diego Reader? If the Union-Tribune went out of business, would Don Bauder have anything left to write about?) with relentless potshots at the U-T.

Moron that later

2009-03-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

Iphones. The blogosphere. Twitter. All have been blamed for the transformation of the newspaper industry into something more suitable for a museum.

Here's another reason: We're living in a country of morons.

A longtime friend of mine, Gordon Murray - has dedicated his life to journalism for more than 30 years, was playing poker with some neighbors the other night when a young, allegedly attractive woman walked in. (This is a true story, so don't expect a punch line.) When she found out Gordon worked at The San Diego Union-Tribune, she quickly boasted that she had no need for newspapers. No need for TV news. No need for television. No need for National Public Radio. When more than a few people pointed out that she might want to rethink her strategy of becoming informed, she was quick with a retort:

"I'm smart. I'm pretty. And that's all that matters!"

Speaking of morons, reading the various Internet postings about the UT's pending sale to Platinum Equity is further proof that any idiot can become a blogger. For example, one posting that has been getting a lot of attention - even though it was based on nothing but a few beers and some good heroin - suggests the paper sold for less than $15 million. This poor bloke obviously has no clue that the UT's headquarters alone - situated on prime property in a premier location in one of the world's most beautiful cities - is worth several times more than that, recession be damned.

For those who missed it, by the way, here is what was released yesterday:

Platinum Equity to Acquire The San Diego Union-Tribune from The Copley Press, Inc.

SAN DIEGO and BEVERLY HILLS, CA – March 18, 2009 – The Copley Press, Inc. and Platinum Equity announced today that they have signed a definitive agreement under which an affiliate of Platinum will acquire San Diego’s leading daily newspaper, The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The transaction, which is expected to be completed during the second quarter, culminates a sales process that began in July 2008 when Copley announced it had engaged an adviser to explore strategic alternatives for the newspaper.

Harold W. Fuson, Jr., executive vice president for Copley, said that Platinum Equity emerged from that process as the bidder best equipped to ensure that the Union-Tribune – which last changed owners in 1928 – maintains its position as one of San Diego’s leading community institutions.

“This is a vital business with a long tradition of public service and a preeminent position in one of America’s finest media markets,” Mr. Fuson said. “At this important juncture, we believe that Platinum Equity is the right partner for the Union-Tribune, its employees and the San Diego community.”

Platinum is a private equity firm that specializes in acquiring businesses facing complex operational challenges in declining or transitioning markets. Louis Samson, the Platinum Equity principal leading the acquisition, called the Union-Tribune “a good fit for Platinum” and its operations-focused approach.

“We have a long history of creating value by helping established companies navigate difficult market transitions,” Mr. Samson said. “The Union-Tribune is more than a business, it’s an institution in San Diego. But it faces enormous challenge in a period of tremendous upheaval for the newspaper industry. We will bring a strong operational focus that helps ensure the Union-Tribune not only survives in this market, but thrives.”

The Platinum team includes David H. Black, an experienced newspaper owner and operator whose holdings include more than 150 newspapers and websites in the United States and Canada.

“The Union-Tribune is a premier media property in an outstanding market,” Mr. Black said. “We are extremely excited about partnering with the management team and dedicated employees of the Union-Tribune, and building this franchise for the future.”

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Evercore Partners and Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP advised Copley on the transaction. Platinum Equity was advised by Hughes Hubbard & Reed and Alvarez & Marsal’s Transaction Advisory Group.

About Platinum Equity
Platinum Equity (www.platinumequity.com) is a global M&A&O® firm specializing in the merger, acquisition and operation of companies that provide services and solutions to customers in a broad range of business markets, including information technology, telecommunications, logistics, metals services, manufacturing and distribution. Since its founding in 1995 by Tom Gores, Platinum Equity has completed nearly 100 acquisitions with more than $27.5 billion in aggregate annual revenue at the time of acquisition.

The Carpathia

2009-03-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

The first time I worked for a newspaper that was sold, I arrived at the old Times-Advocate of Escondido about the same time the Tribune Co. was consolidating its hold over its new property. If there were any profound changes brought on by the new owners, I really didn't notice.

More than a decade later, I lived through another change of ownership when A.H. Belo (The Dallas Morning News) bought the family-owned Press-Enterprise of Riverside. Belo brought in a new executive editor, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner George Rodrique (who I still think is the best executive I've ever worked for), but I left the company for greener pastures before the really profound changes took place.

Today, the newspaper I've been working for the past nine years - The San Diego Union-Tribune - announced it has agreed to sell to Platinum Equity of Beverly Hills for an undisclosed price (which The Wall Street Journal quotes a source as saying is south of $50 million). As stated in an earlier blog post, David Black of Canadian-based Black Press is a partner in the deal, though his exact role has not been disclosed and remains the topic of abundant conjecture.

Relief, anxiety, concern and anticipation are but a few words that describe not only my feelings, but the feelings of most of the people I know. Will the paycuts and furloughs announced just two months ago continue under the new leadership? Who knows (my guess is, `No Duh'). Will the promised layoffs that have yet to materialize, in fact, come to pass? Who knows. (Again, my guess is a big `No Duh') Will the new owners bring a clearer sense of vision to Mission Valley? Everyone I talk to responds with an unequivocal yes. But whether that's good or bad remains to be seen and depends on whom you talk to.

How are others seeing this deal? With interest. The Journal reported "the paper generated about $100 million in cash flow in 2004, according to people familiar with the paper's finances, meaning the Union-Tribune could have been worth close to $1 billion based on valuations at the time. Now, the paper is close to break even, these people say, as it has been battered by the collapse of newspaper classifieds."

The Depression, er, recession, hasn't helped, either.

So what do we know about Platinum Equity? If you recall the earlier post, they have a really cool Web site. And they're headed by a really, really rich guy, Israeli native Tom Gores, whom Forbes says is worth a cool $2.5 billion - the 163rd richest American (but who's counting?).

Platinum also has made a nice living for its investors through buying distressed properties, fixing them up, and selling them at a profit. After cutting costs.

If you have a few million dollars, or more, to invest, you might want to bank it with Platinum. The New Mexico Educational Retirement Board invested $30 million of its portfolio with the private equity firm last year.

"They don't look necessarily at fundamentally broken companies, but at companies where there are one or more operational issues that are preventing a company from realizing its true potential from financial and operational perspectives," according to minutes of a January, 2008, meeting. One investment expert was "impressed with the discipline of the group in terms of what they will purchase and where they will focus."

Harold Fuson Jr., executive vice-president for Copley Press, Inc., said in a statement released this morning that Platinum emerged "as the bidder best equipped to ensure that the Union-Tribune - which last changed owners in 1928 - maintains its position as one of San Diego's leading community institutions."

The Titanic may be sinking, but the Carpathia may well be on its way. Let's hope it isn't four hours late this time.

Bad day at the office

2009-03-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer publishes its last print edition tomorrow. McClatchy's News & Observer is cutting about 27 newsroom jobs while mandating furloughs. And The New York Times comes out with an opinion piece today offering a strong argument for why newspapers can't be saved.

Just another chapter in the sinking of the Titanic.

Meanwhile, Copley's Borrego Sun has been sold to Patrick Meehan, a former Black Sabbath manager and majority owner of British media entertainment company HandMade Films (Life of Brian; Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). No price was announced. The sale leaves Copley with one remaining paper, The San Diego Union-Tribune.

I'm so glad we had this time together....

2009-03-11T20:58:00.000-07:00

I've sold programs at Dodger Stadium, made skis in Sparks, Nevada, washed dishes at college dormitories. And I can assure you that no place I've worked can provide the atmosphere of a newsroom.

Today was typical. From discussing in depth with copy editor Jim Healy the nuances in the theme song from Mannix and the classic early episodes of Mr. Ed (I still can't believe he's never seen the one where Mr. Ed outpitches Don Drysdale at Chavez Ravine), to waxing poetic with copy editor John Keller about the Lakers' chances of winning their 15th NBA title this year (why is it that I find the most interesting discussions with copy editors?), the people I deal with daily on the third floor of The San Diego Union-Tribune offer me what we used to call a psychic benefit: freedom from a boring workplace.

We're going through uncertain times; friends tell me I should change the name of my blog to EndangeredJournalist.com. Who knows if the newspaper I work for will be around by the time my youngest child gets to college? But I worry not. I find it refreshing to engage in routine conversation with co-workers, where I can learn everything from the best way to cook fried rice (thank you, Helen Gao) to the better neighborhoods for my son to live in near UC Davis (courtesy of Steve Schmidt). I've learned everything I need to know about Gaelic soccer (I never knew such a thing existed until last week), along with more than I need to know about creating my own Web site or finding lost dogs. And whenever I need to brush up on Chicago politics or get my fill of San Diego State basketball, John Cannon is there to help.

In what other job, what other profession, could I meet everyone from Orrin Hatch to John Lee Hooker, get thrown out of the Dodger clubhouse by none other than Tommy Lasorda, or learn how to make killer lasagna from the firefighters at Station 9 in Escondido? But best of all, in what other profession could I have met the wonderful people who have crossed my path in various newsrooms the past 28 years?

I may not be working here next week, but I'll never regret the line of work I chose.

The Promised Land

2009-03-06T20:49:00.000-08:00

Twenty-eight years ago this week I landed my first regular-paying job as a reporter. The parallels to what's transpiring in the industry today are almost frightening.

In 1981, the unemployment rate was soaring, the economy was in deep decline and newspapers across the country were folding at a record pace as the reading public lost its appetite for afternoon editions. The industry was going through a transformation toward the digital age. Touting myself as being literate in the use of computers - VDT experience! I boasted - got more than one potential employer to take notice.

Still, no one was hiring. The industry, many said, was dying. But there was nothing more that I wanted to do, and I was willing to do it for free.

Paul Danison, now of the Orange County Register, heard of me through some mutual acquaintances. I was a senior at San Diego State University, working full time as editorial page editor of The Daily Aztec, laboring from 7 to 11 at nights as a janitor and taking a full load of classes somewhere in between. Sleep was overrated.

I don't remember much of my interview with Paul, except that he was a Reds fan and I told him I loved the Dodgers, but it was my talk with a reporter at the paper that sealed the deal. We work hard here, Mark Petix warned me. The hours are long. We do everything except take out the trash. And the pay is crap.

Heck, I told him. I work about 60 hours a week. Go to school full time. As a janitor, taking out the trash was the easiest part of my night job. And I'll work for free.

Bring it on, I said.

I was hired. I had arrived. The fact that I was offered $150 a week was gravy. With three months left in my senior year at college, I began covering the unincorporated community of Cardiff for The Citizen of Solana Beach, a weekly paper affiliated with the daily Blade-Tribune of Oceanside.

Those of us who entered the business in trying times - and there have been many - have similar stories to tell, some way better than mine. But for me, the roles are now reversed. As an editor who has found a niche working with college interns, I see highly educated, gifted young writers everyday yearning to launch a career in an industry during a period of unprecedented transformation. The challenges facing newspapers do not to discourage, however, but serve to motivate.

And they're pretty damn talented, possessing skills far beyond what some publications consider necessary for thriving multi-media sites.

These kids are the future of the industry. They will lead us to the promised land. Just as my generation did during the last economic calamity some 30 years ago.

Thanks for the memories

2009-02-23T20:24:00.000-08:00

He's had enough. Enough of the incessant reports detailing the inevitable demise of newspapers. Enough of the never-ending litany of layoffs chronicled by Romenesko. Enough of the industry's new (but already well-worn) slogan, "More with Less."

For years he had been offered well-paying jobs in other lines of work. Every so often, a government agency would come calling with a proposal to be a spokesman or policy wonk. But he was a lifer. Someone who wanted nothing more than to be a good reporter at a big city newspaper. Someone determined to fight the good fight on behalf of some noble cause.

He would be a journalist to the end.

Or so he thought.

With several rounds of buyouts and layoffs over the years leading to a decline in the product that defined who he is, my friend has decided to leave. He has gone through several rounds of interviews, and all that is left is an offer he won't refuse. Sometime in the next week or two, he will give his notice to his bosses toiling in an industry suffering from a dearth of leadership.

He was the last person, besides myself, who I thought would decide to pack it in. But he's had enough. And I can't say that I blame him. And when he goes, a part of me will go with him.

The omen

2009-02-18T20:20:00.000-08:00

Parking yourself by a desk in a newsroom for most of the day can sometimes make one forget that there is more to publishing a newspaper than utilizing the skills of reporters, editors, photographers and the like. And as dire as the industry's proverbial "perfect storm" has been for journalists, it has been even more dire in other parts of the business.

Like the production building.

A friend of mine who I know mostly through our shared interest in music - he plays the drums in three bands and I sometimes bring my guitar to sit in on some sets at local blues clubs - also works at the paper in a place where most journalists probably couldn't find: the packaging department. And my colleagues who thought mandatory furlough days and 9.25 percent pay cuts were hard to digest should have a talk with him. He thinks we're lucky.

My buddy has been working in packaging for nearly a quarter century. He began his career in the business when he was 22 years old. Ronald Reagan had yet to be tainted by the Iran-Contra scandal. Los Angeles still had two professional football teams. A full-timer, he was devoted to his job and the company. His pay: about $20 an hour.

On Feb. 1, his pay was cut almost in half. His hours were also slashed, rendering him a part-timer and making him ineligible for health insurance. The bottom line: his earnings have gone from about $800 a week to a little more than $300. He can only get by now through the help of his paying gigs.

Several of his co-workers, similarly affected, saw the reductions in hour and pay as an insult. They quit. Meanwhile, the department has cut its full-time staff in half, and those who were making what my friend was earning saw their pay slashed, too. Even part-timers who were making but $13 or $14 an hour saw their pay cut.

I'm not passing any judgements as to whether these folks were screwed, or whether the company made a well-reasoned business decision to stay afloat during an unprecedented downturn in the industry. But who's to say what's happening in packaging won't start happening in newsrooms across the country?

Film at 11

2009-02-12T21:16:00.000-08:00

Much has been said over the past couple years about the imminent demise of newspapers and what that will mean to Democracy as we know it. One thing's for sure, television news certainly won't be the same.

As someone with the good fortune, or misfortune, of having a television (with cable!) on my desk, I watch the news virtually all day. And let me tell you, if it were not for the newspaper, these guys would have nothing to report, except maybe the weather and the occasional car chase. Television news would be reduced to a reality show. One station has gone so far as to invite reporters from Voice of San Diego, a Web site that focuses on San Diego government issues, onto its afternoon newscasts to talk about that organization's latest scoops. Another has partnered with the North County Times for some of its news. All brazenly rip off The San Diego Union-Tribune for its juiciest pieces, including today's front-page gem by Jeanette Steele detailing how financial challenges facing the San Diego Historical Society are resulting in some very visible cutbacks in service. Proving that no story is too small to steal, one station even plucked from a community news section a story about the possible closure of an after-school center (a story that a shocked, shocked! councilwoman later told the center she had no idea what was going on until she read about it in the paper).

It's a daily occurrence. Sometimes, an anchor will attribute the story to the U-T. Far more frequently, he or she won't. Either way, if we go, television news will have nothing to offer but a few pretty little faces.

90210

2009-02-12T20:29:00.001-08:00

If you want to peruse through a smart looking Web page, log onto Beverly Hills-based Platinum Equity's site. "A multibillion dollar revenue base," a message reads as it scrolls along black and white photos of what looks to be the original Getty Musuem in Malibu (or some really really rich guy's mansion). "Hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide," another banner reads. "Tens of thousands of employees."

Platinum is a global firm "specializing in the merger, acquisition and operation of companies that provide services and solutions to customers in a broad range of business markets, including information technology, telecommunications, logistics, metals services, manufacturing and distribution," the site states. Navigate further and you'll find Covad Communications Group, Inc. (April, 2008), Tecumseh Power (November, 2007) and Broadleaf Logistics (June 2007) among its acquisitions.

Platinum might soon have another trophy in its case: The San Diego Union-Tribune. According to several sources (who knows how good they are?), Platinum is the key financial backer behind the Black Press in its pending effort to buy one of California's largest papers, and all that's left is a few dotting of the "i's" and crossing of the "t's." David Black, the privately held company's chairman and chief executive, was seen touring the U-T's Mission Valley headquarters Wednesday.

The smart money, however, is on an announcement next week. Breaking the news that the U-T has sold on Friday the 13th might be bad form.

Oh Canada

2009-02-04T21:11:00.000-08:00

The latest talk from those paying attention to what's going on at The San Diego Union-Tribune is that the Copley paper is being sold to the Black Press of Canada, a rather large - and apparently healthy - publishing company that owns more than a few (dozen) newspapers in Alberta, British Columbia, Hawaii, Washington and Ohio (including the Akron Beacon-Journal). Black Press sightings are everywhere, along with a potential partner. Why, just the other day, a few Canadian suits were said to have been spotted on a grassy knoll just outside the paper's Mission Valley headquarters.

I'll believe it when an announcement is made. Over the past few weeks, "sources" inside the newsroom have told other news(?) organizations that massive layoffs - a major bloodletting! - would come the next day, then the next, then the next...yet nothing has been announced. Yet.

I'm at the point of being too busy to care. With a staff reduced by several rounds of buyouts and layoffs over the past two-plus years, there's more than enough to keep me occupied. If the Black Press becomes my future employer, more power to them. They'll get what I've given every employer since I landed my first job selling programs at Dodger Stadium in 1975: The best effort money can buy - at an economical price.

....Meanwhile, I've gotten a lot of feedback from a recent posting on how silly it was for newspapers to spend millions of dollars producing a product, only to give it away for free on the Web. New York Times editor Bill Keller addressed the issue in gawker.com, a New York-based blog, validating my point.

Writes gawker:
So here's what newspapers need: some collective action. What if, say, the 100 biggest papers in the nation all started charging for online access at once? That would make it much harder to track down quality news for free. People happily paid to read newspapers before the internet came along. Then newspapers started giving away all their content for free, and now people think that it should be free. But if a paper's website can't pay its own way through online advertising, and if it doesn't somehow bolster print ad revenues, then it has to charge for access. It's common sense. Millions of extra online readers are nice, but if they don't bring in more money than they cost you, they're no good for the paper.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

The great depression

2009-01-30T20:05:00.000-08:00

There's a bumper sticker on a copy editor's desk at work that states simply: Funeral.

Kind of describes the mood in the industry. Over in Dallas, publisher A.H. Belo, a former employer of mine, said today it would lay off 500 workers - about 14 percent of its work force - and take other cost-saving measures. "The decline in advertising revenues for the newspaper industry and all media persists," Chief Executive Robert Decherd said in a memo. "The key for all companies, and certainly for A.H. Belo, is to generate and preserve cash."

Good luck. In the third quarter of last year, the company reported a loss of $17.4 million. Shares in the company yesterday fell nearly 4 percent to close at $2. When I worked for the Belo-owned Press-Enterprise less than 10 years ago, shares were selling in excess of $30.

It was about as bad closer to home, where the Tribune Co.-owned Los Angeles Times said it would cut about 300 positions, including 70 - roughly 11 percent - in editorial. "The same challenges that face the companies we report about also are affecting us," Publisher Eddy Hartenstein said in his memo. Oh, by the way, the local section will be eliminated, merged into a reconfigured front section.

What about those companies the Times and other news organizations are writing about? Let's see. Nearly 200,000 jobs have been shed in January alone. Home Depot, Pfizer, Sprint and Caterpillar announced earlier this week that they were laying off 60,000 workers. Yesterday, the government reported the gross domestic product saw its greatest decline in 26 years during the fourth quarter of 2008. Eastman Kodak said it was cutting up to 4,500 jobs - up to 18 percent of its work force. Ford reported today it lost $14.6 billion last year. And Sears Holdings Co. laid off 300 corporate employees.

It's bad, and it's getting worse. I'm not optimistic about this economy, and I'm hardly alone. Meanwhile, folks at The San Diego Union-Tribune came to work today fully expecting to lose their jobs, but the layoffs we've been told are so imminent have yet to materialize.

There's always Monday.

Are we stupid or what?

2009-01-28T21:01:00.000-08:00

Imagine John Steinbeck spending years researching and writing an American classic. When he completes his tome, the book is offered not for sale, but for free. On the Internet. Steinbeck gets nothing for his work.

Imagine the Ford motor company spending countless years and millions of dollars developing a prototype automobile of the future. When it completes its work, the company offers the car not for sale, but for free, on AutoTrader.com.

Imagine Eli Lilly & Co. employing the world's most renown scientists developing a cancer-fighting drug. When it comes time to put the product on the market, Lilly switches gears and offers the elixir for free. No charge. To anyone who wants it.

Pretty damn crazy, huh?

Maybe not so much. Because everyday, newspapers employ thousands of well-paid, and not-so-well-paid reporters, researchers, editors photographers and layout artists to document what has been called the rough draft of history. And what happens to the fruits of this investment? It is offered free, on the Internet.

Are we stupid or what?

No wonder journalism is a dying breed. We're idiots. Would a plumber come to your house on Chistmas morning, unclog your kitchen sink, then walk away without demanding to be compensated? Then what in heaven's sake are we doing offering, for free, everything we've worked so hard to create?

Why not charge for online content, especially content that is proprietary? Why not offer free access to our Web sites, and perhaps the first few graphs of a wire story, but charge a monthly access fee to anyone who wants to read a story researched, developed and produced by a newspaper staff? Why not charge an access fee to the many yahoos who feel like they need to comment on every story they read online?

If 100,000 people regularly access a newspaper Web site daily, and that newspaper were to charge $5 per month for full access of that site, you're talking about an additional $6 million annually in revenue. That would help make up for a few lost Robinson-May ads.

Sound simplistic? Perhaps. But that's how we need to start thinking. Because the system we have now isn't working. And we're digging our own grave.

Not the water cooler!!!

2009-01-27T20:40:00.000-08:00

My oldest son, much to my horror, has shown a strong attraction to journalism and a possible career in the newspaper industry. And why not? He's a gifted writer, way more intelligent than I and has become quite the leader in his 19-plus years. These days, he's studying political science and economics at UC Davis, where he also serves on the staff of the California Aggie as city editor.

Today, it was announced that the school newspaper would make the type of mid-year budget cuts common throughout the industry. Here's what Richard Proctor, editor in chief, had to say to his readers:

Dear Aggie Readers,

Due to mounting budget losses, The California Aggie has found it necessary to make several mid-year cuts. The most visible of these is our decision to cease having a print edition of the newspaper on Fridays. Articles that would have run in the Friday issue of the newspaper will be posted online at theaggie.org.

But wait. There's more.....

Other less visible cuts that we've had to make include closing the front office on Fridays, removing stipends for staff writers and staff photographers, cutting manager pay and slightly reducing the circulation of the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday issues. We have also made an effort to remove anything not absolutely necessary from The Aggie's budget, including money for staff retreats, special training, certain office supplies and the water cooler.

Historically, The Aggie's expenses have been fairly even with advertising revenue. For the past several years, however, ad sales, The Aggie's only source of revenue, have been in sharp decline. This year marks a new low. The primary reasons behind this are two-fold.

First, for approximately the past five years, newspapers everywhere have been finding it increasingly hard to make ends meet due to the increasing popularity of online publishing. Readers can get the same news for free whenever they want, usually at a faster pace. By-the-second updates have made print media less than optimal as a primary news source. By and large, even the best newspapers have struggled to adapt to this new environment. The New York Times, for example, recently started to run front-page advertisements and is facing $1.1 billion in debt. The recent $250 million investment by Mexico based telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim has put off the worst of their troubles for the time being, but their problems are still indicative of the industry as a whole.

The Aggie, along with other college newspapers, has a largely captive audience. As a result, industry ills are often delayed in affecting this newspaper. Those problems, however, have finally come to the fore and are the reason for our increased work on our website as well as our budget cuts.

Second, the abysmal state of the national economy has made advertisers wary of purchasing any ad space, let alone space in a college newspaper. Until the economy improves, it is unlikely that advertising for The Aggie will see any significant increase from what it is right now. Because The Aggie's budget needs to be based on solid data and expectations instead of hopeful forecasts, it was deemed necessary to make drastic cuts right now in order to address the deficit The Aggie will face at the end of the year.

These cuts, while unfortunate, are not without precedent. The Daily Californian, for example, no longer produces a Wednesday print edition.

These are likely the extent of the publicly visible budget slashes, though The Aggie's management continues to meet with both the Campus Media Board and a special subcommittee of the media board devoted to the discussion of Aggie finances. The ultimate goal is to keep The Aggie printing for as many days a week as possible for as long as possible. We take our duty to provide the UC Davis campus and surrounding community with news and information very seriously.

We strongly encourage you to continue reading The Aggie's Friday articles online at our website (theaggie.org); our reporters and editors are still working their very hardest to bring you up to date information about the community you live in.

We thank you for your continued readership and support.

Sincerely,

Richard Procter
Editor in Chief

My son's pay was cut 10 percent - a tad more than my pay was cut last week. Alas, he's facing another 10 percent cut in pay soon.

...Meanwhile, I'm doing what I can to save our circulation, one reader at a time.

While checking my voicemail Monday, I came across a well-reasoned critique of the paper by a longtime reader who was wondering why he should pay for the product any longer. This gentleman, who has been a customer of The San Diego Union-Tribune (more precisely, The San Diego Union, and then The San Diego Union-Tribune) since he was a kid more than 40 years ago, said the paper had become so thin, it was no longer worth it. He counted only a few A-section stories worth reading. The local section was even more lacking. Why should he pay, he asked, when he could get what we were offering for free?

He left his number, so I called him back, fully expecting to get an earful. Instead, we had a cordial conversation in which I detailed the challenges we were facing and argued, as I have in previous postings here, that online journalism should not replace the printed version of the news, but complement it. As he articulated his concerns, it became clear to me that he was speaking not only as a reader, but as a citizen of San Diego who is vested in the paper. He wanted the paper to thrive. He wanted it to be better.

It was a great talk, and I was glad I returned the call. And it concluded with one final pitch. Please, please, please, don't cancel the subscription. If he did, I pointed out in jest, we would have only 37 readers left, and two of those are in my house.

He kept my number. I hope he calls back.

...One last note
Folks who insist on speculating about how many people will get laid off and when the ax will fall should find another hobby. No one except a small circle of executives who earn a much higher salary than I knows what might be going on. And they aren't talking.

The growing legion

2009-01-21T20:35:00.000-08:00

The anxiety that comes with knowing that layoffs are coming, and that layoffs are coming soon, but you don't know if you'll be one of those who will be laid off, is hard to describe. `Unsettling' doesn't quite encompass the breadth of emotions. `Concerned' isn't quite descriptive enough. `Uneasy' moves closer to a more accurate portrayal, but even that isn't quite there.

You get the picture. It's messed up. It's been almost a week since I was told that layoffs are coming and that layoffs are coming sooner, rather than later. How many? I wasn't told that. When? I wasn't told that, either. The factors that go into who will go and who will stay? Nope.

The result are myriad unanswered questions. Do you spend a few hundred bucks replacing a dingy old couch that could put a healthy man in traction, or do you sock it away for next month's mortgage? Do you resolve never to go out to dinner again until the future is clearer, or do you splurge in an effort at releasing some tension? Do you take that planned vacation, or do you keep it in the bank, knowing that the paid time off will come in handy when the steady paychecks stop.

It is an usettled, disconcerting, uneasy time not only where I work, but at workplaces across the country. Layoffs are on everyone's mind. It has become so paramount, I sometimes forget the pay reductions and increased health insurance premiums.

The people I know have trooped on marvelously. Today's paper detailing the historic inauguration of a black man inheriting a White House built by slaves was a masterpiece. Beat reporters are commited as ever. Every day, jewels are published by people living under such stress that recent editions now, more than ever, embody the meaning of the so-called `daily miracle.' People who don't know if their careers will suddenly end tomorrow are busting their ass, refusing to go quietly into that dying of the light.

Meanwhile, the speculation continues. Reporters at other publications are wondering how bad the bloodletting will be, trying to confirm rumors that WARN letters - required in California when more a good chunk of a company's workforce will be axed - are being prepared.

Who knows? But it's a bit disquieting knowing that my next blog entry could be written by the newest member of the country's growing legion of the unemployed.

Smell the glove

2009-01-19T19:48:00.001-08:00

One of the more fascinating stories in the 24-hour news cycle today had nothing to do with the plummeting stock market, the NFC and AFC championship games or the cessation of hostilities in the Middle East. Nope. It was an Associated Press story on the cover of the Union-Tribune's business section: a 22-incher discussing how newspapers are planning to sell millions of additional copies detailing Barack Obama's historic inauguration.

I thought newspapers were dead.

Then why is the Washington Post planning an "extra" afternoon print edition while boosting single-copy prices from 75 cents to $2 a pop? Why is the San Diego Union-Tribune planning to print an additional 80,000 copies of Wednesday's paper? Why did customers of The New York Times line up to buy editions of that paper outside its headquarters the day after Obama trounced John McCain in November?

According to the AP, sales of the Nov. 5 edition and related merchandise, including a framed front page of The Times that sold for $299, has brought that company a cool $2.3 million.

I wonder if any Web sites are cashing in like that?

Dying industry my ass.

Glug, glug, glug

2009-01-16T19:44:00.000-08:00

"...Glug, glug, glug," said the last man standing on the deck of the Titanic as the once-proud ship listed more quickly than ever into the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

Or at least that's what it felt like after the latest bombshell at The San Diego Union-Tribune today: a suspension of the company's matching 401(k) contributions; a mandatory unpaid furlough program for non-salaried employees; a freeze on merit pay; a near doubling in the employee share of health-care premiums; and a big hefty pay cut - 9.25 percent - for me.

But the worst is yet to come: more layoffs that I'm guessing will come next week.

It could be worse. Gannett Co. told its employees today that the Tucson Citizen will cease publication on March 21 if a buyer can't be found. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And the Detroit papers are pushing ahead with plans to cease publication of a real paper most of the week.

Meanwhile, the calvary is nowhere to be found. Circuit City announced today it's liquidating its U.S. stores, and Macy's is cutting back sharply on its newspaper advertising.

The reaction has been one of stunned silence. I saw many tears shed today, though you never know if that had something to do with an uncermonious end to a relationship. I, and everyone I know, is keeping busy, doing more with less, refusing to succumb to the temptation of just giving up and walking out the door.

One thing is for certain. It's going to get worse. Blogs are reporting the Union-Tribune has lost more than 40 percent of our advertising revenue since 2006, and the recession has yet to hit its stride. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if we're halfway to a depression. (Think of it: If you use the same government criteria we were using back in 1931, unemployment is soaring past 14 percent).

Still, I have no regrets. My only other dream was to play centerfield for the Los Angeles Dodgers, a dream I easily could have reached had it not been for my lack of youth and talent. So this is what I do. This is who I am. This is what I believe in. And this industry will thrive once this economy rights itself.

Of course, I may be dead by then.

keep hangin' on

2009-01-14T21:03:00.000-08:00

No announcements have been made, but several folks I know outside the business have been worried about me nonetheless, wondering if I've been laid off. Nope. But in the latest cutbacks, 20 people (or 23, depending on who you listen to) have been axed from the pressroom.

When you gotta go...

2009-01-12T21:07:00.000-08:00

When I woke up after a fitful sleep in the middle of the night not long ago, I did what I always do when I have too much on my mind for an uninterrupted slumber. I headed to the kitchen and gobbled up some Cheerios.

And read the paper.

And why not? I didn't have time to read the whole thing the morning prior, so I found myself catching up on the stories I had missed. Sure, the news was "old," but I wasn't looking for the box scores from the Lakers game that ended just a few hours earlier. I was perusing through the so-called think pieces. I read a couple movie reviews. But most important, the paper was convenient. It was right there. I didn't have to turn on a computer. I didn't have to wait for it to boot up. I didn't have to log in. And I didn't have to deal with any popup ads.

Why do I bring this up? Because everywhere I go, everything I read, the message is the same: Newspapers are a dying breed. the Internet is infinitely more convenient. Only dinasaurs read print. The brain surgeons who run the industry seem intent on running from what people want and destroying the quality of print in a stampede to reign supreme over an online medium that can't even pay for itself.

It's madness.

Yes, there is an audience online. And if you want to succeed in the 21st century newsgathering business, you'd better excel in that medium. But online isn't the cure-all. Everytime someone in my family goes to the crapper, they take a paper, not a computer. Everytime I see someone catching up on the news while riding a bus or trolley, they're reading a paper, not a computer. Everytime I sit in a doctor's office waiting for my appointment, folks are reading the paper, not a computer.

Fact is, we have hundreds of thousands of newspaper readers in every large city, yet you could hardly tell by the strategy some in the industry are following.

Look. I use the computer as much as anyone to communicate, as evidenced by this blog. And when I want to see who won the latest basketball or baseball game, I eschew the sports ticker on ESPN and log on to a computer instead. By the time the paper comes out in the morning, I know everything I need to know about what's written about the Dodgers or Lakers in the LA Time sports page. I've even read the latest New York Times headlines on my cell phone while riding the train home from work.

But I'm also a newspaper reader. As are well more than a million other people in San Diego County. And there are stories in the paper that I would rather read in the paper. There are conveniences with print that you cannot get online.

So why are we losing so many newspaper readers? I suppose more than a handful are dying. And even more are cutting back because of the economic collapse. But our refusal to even acknowledge that newspapers are the medium of choice for tens of millions of Americans, and our failure to strategically market what has long been a cash cow is shortsighted. And pretty damn stupid.

As for me, I'm logging off for now. There's a story or two I didn't get to read about the Chargers this morning, and I have to go to the bathroom.

Shining star

2009-01-05T19:53:00.001-08:00

Several years ago I interviewed a young, talented, energetic reporter from New Mexico who was applying for a job at The San Diego Union-Tribune. It didn't take long to hire him. He started his tenure here working in a bureau covering cops. It didn't take long for him to complete an investigation detailing how El Cajon police were getting into more collisions than a drunk at a demolition derby.

Ultimately, he moved over to the government team, where it didn't take long for him to latch onto an investigation detailing how administrators had no records for almost $1 million in grants given to community groups from special funds set up for each of the five county supervisors.

He was good. He loved his job. He loved the profession. But he wanted to move closer to his family, so - despite my urgings not to - he took a post with the Rocky Mountain News. His track record in Denver was similar to that in San Diego. Relentless, determined, passionate and talented, he went after the same sort of wrongdoing in the Rocky Mountains that he found in San Diego County.

He sent me an email today asking for a reference. The Rocky Mountain News is on the market. If it doesn't sell, it will probably shut down. My friend will be out of a job. And our profession might lose yet another rising star.

Monday morning quarterback

2008-12-30T21:21:00.000-08:00

When you spend nearly 30 years in the same career and countless hours in newsroom meetings, it's easy to lose touch with the real world, with real people with real challenges.

At a party last night, I was the only journalist in a rather large group, an object of curiosity among people who had heard about, but were certainly disconnected to, the upheaval reporters, editors and publishers are enduring during these troubled economic times. I got a lot of questions about where we were heading, and I offered my views about the lack of leadership in an industry that is doing a horrible job marketing itself and running from its strengths. But the most fascinating - and somewhat depressing - discussions I had were with two mathematicians, trained engineers working for competing companies in Rancho Bernardo.

Both are highly intelligent, both have earned masters degrees in mathematics, and both have ample background in engineering and physics. One works for General Atomics, which describes itself as a firm that "offers research, development and consulting services to the nuclear industry, including nuclear energy production, defense and related applications." His counterpart works for Northrup Grumman, which describes itself as "a global defense and technology company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in information and services, electronics, aerospace and shipbuilding to government and commercial customers worldwide."

Pretty heady stuff. Both have paid their dues, certainly. One served several years in the Navy before putting himself through UC San Diego, living on Macaroni and Cheese dinners before his breakthrough at Northrup Grumman.

And for both, the recession, the fall of newspapers and the hatchet job the current administration has done to our economy is more of an abstract. It doesn't really affect them, for their businesses are booming. With billions of dollars in government contracts, the last thing on their mind is job security.

As I listened to them describe the projects they were working on, including a laser based satellite system in its research and development stage, I felt, quite honestly, like an idiot. They deal with mathematical equations; I deal with whether there are too many commas in a sentence. They deal with developing systems that could ensure our very survival. I deal with Christmas tree recycling lists.

Am I being hard on myself? Certainly. But last night, for the first time in a long time, I began to wonder if I made the right career choice.

Hope springs eternal

2008-12-29T16:03:00.000-08:00

As noted earlier, Sharon Heilbrunn will be leaving the Union-Tribune, and Friday is her last day. It's going to be a huge loss for the paper, and especially our readers. With Sharon's permission, I'm reprinting a note she sent to a group of current and former staffers.

At the end of this week, I will leave the U-T -- where I've worked since 2005, most recently as a general assignment Metro Staff Writer -- for a yearlong multimedia fellowship with KPBS, where I will learn to produce and report news across all platforms, including radio, television and online.

People thought the decision was an easy one. After all, the paper is/isn't being sold, print media is in trouble, multimedia is the way to go, etc. etc. etc.

But the truth is, it was an extremely hard choice. Let me explain why.

(First, some perspective: I'm under 30, I'm a journalism rookie, and I don't know a lot about the "old days.")

Here's the deal -- I love what I do. I know that's a cliche, but it's worth repeating. I'm under 30, and I love what I do. I know about the troubles of print journalism, but I think it's extremely vital to keep in mind that people in this industry still love what they do. Young people. Old people. Rookies. Veterans. I don't think that will die. We might not always love the way we're asked to do it, but the root of it -- reporting, telling stories, uncovering facts -- that, we love. I get to talk to people, to experience things, to figure out how to take a jumbled mess of notes and weave it into something measurable, something interesting. I still feel an adrenalin rush when I see my byline in the newspaper.

I didn't always love this. In fact, it took several editors and reporters to believe in me before I started loving what I do. Which brings me to my next point.

I love who I work with. (I have lots of love.)

My desk in the Mission Valley building faces editor Karin Winner's office, across from the long conference room. I know exactly where to walk to satiate my mood. If I need a little laugh, I'll turn around and head to the Sports Dept. to talk to the people over there for a while. There's always something quirky happening in that area. (Plus, they always have food.) If I want a little friendly conversation, I'll march over to the folks at the Photo Desk and SignOn, who always humor my "whatcha doing" questions when I need to clear my head. And If I just want to feel like I am part of something much bigger than myself, I'll sit at my desk and simply listen. Behind me, Jeff McDonald and Michael Stetz are engaged in a friendly banter. Across from me, Helen Gao is kicking butt, asking sources the kind of questions that make them sweat. And if I look to my right, my editor, David Ogul, is complaining about something and asking where my story is and eating M&M's by the handful.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

And when I sit with Mr. Ogul to edit one of my stories, I always get that same excited feeling when we finally file. I'm lucky, fortunate to have worked with such a fine editor, who took the time to not only nurture my writing and my hunger to stretch as a reporter, but also to get to know me and support my efforts. Alexa Capeloto, my former editor, did the same. I thank them, as well as the other gifted editors I've worked with at the U-T, who all have contributed to my growth.

The U-T is full of extremely talented people. I stand by that, because I've seen it and felt it and am proud to know it. Yes, it isn't perfect. But if I just take my little bubble and I look back on the last three years, (and especially the last six months), I'd like to believe that in my immediate surroundings -- when it's just me, the reporters around me and some fine editors doing our jobs -- the environment is much like it was 15, 20 years ago. Witty comments are still made. Hilarious stories are told. Reporters still look out for other reporters and lend a helping hand when necessary. We ask how their families are. We rally around a sick colleague as if it we were rallying around our 80-year old grandma. We look out for our own. We support one another. And we continue to love what we do.

I don't know much. I'm young, I'm sure many will think I'm naive, and yes, I probably am. A bit idealistic, I'm sure. But I do know that when I go to pack up my desk this week, it won't be without its share of sadness for what I am about to leave.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, even with its troubles, journalism still has its followers. The relationships and camaraderie built in newsrooms, that can only be cultivated by people who understand what it's like in the trenches, still inspire fledgling reporters. Young people are still attracted to the craft. Soon, it might not exist the way we know it, but I guess there has to be some kind of hope for an industry that still churns out people who love what they do.

The Ice Man Cometh

2008-12-22T20:12:00.000-08:00

I was talking to a few friends today while on my daily run and the conversation quickly turned to ruminations about how long The Union-Tribune would continue to be a newspaper. One person said 3 years. Another said 5 or 10. Always the optimist, I said it would last as a newspaper for at least 20, and probably longer. Which got me to wondering: What do other folks in the business, or who have left the business, or who are contemplating entering the business, think about the future of newspapers? Send your thoughts to ogul59@hotmail.com and I'll post them in my next blog.

The Day After

2008-12-15T21:06:00.000-08:00

Wow. What a week. E.W. Scripps announces it's putting the Rocky Mountain News up for sale (amid rumors it might shut the paper down), the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press are talking about cutting home delivery to three days a week and the Tribune Co. files for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, employees of the Copley Press, owners of The San Diego Union-Tribune, are told contributions to the company's pension plan will cease Jan. 31. The latest development comes after the announcement that an editor and reporter are leaving the paper, yielding yet two more vacant desks in a newsroom some have likened to a scene in The Day After.

And we still don't know when we're going to hit bottom.

As for me, I'm popping open another bottle of Cabernet (Greg Norman, North Coast, 2006 - in case anyone's wondering what to get me for the holidays) and hoping this will all go away in the morning.

Resin up the bow

2008-12-12T17:37:00.000-08:00

While I resin up the bow for Nearer, My God, to Thee, others are jumping onto the lifeboats. Last week it was Assistant Metro Editor Dani Dodge. Today, it was reporter Sharon Heilbrunn. It's hard to tell which hit is harder, but neither loss is easy to endure.

Dani came to the Union-Tribune a few years ago with a reputation as a spunky reporter from Ventura. It didn't take long for her to leave an impression in our newsroom. About a week after she got here, she headed to Mexico for a front-page feature on road racing in Baja. She also did some notable work under less-than-ideal conditions in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans before settling in as a downtown San Diego reporter. It was during her days as a downtown reporter that Dani worked with me, which is enough to drive anyone crazy. Instead, she thrived. A short time later, Dani was an editor, always willing to toil on the days others tried to avoid and never hesitant to take on a challenging assignment.

She's going to the San Diego Zoological Society and will most likely soon become the next Joan Embry.

Sharon, who also worked with me (maybe there's a connection here?), also came to us a few years ago, but as a news assistant with a bachelor's degree from San Diego State University. She worked in El Cajon under the tutelage of Assistant Metro Editor and rising star Alexa Capeloto and managed to get more than a few bylines in the paper. Sufficiently impressed, management promoted her to the rank of reporter just a few months ago, working for yours truly, where she continued to shine.

Sharon is a newspaper publisher's best friend. She's young, doesn't earn anywhere near enough to break the bank, but she produces, has all sorts of skills, and has pretty much mastered much of the new media that is threatening the very existence of many newspapers. She also loves her job and is a fine writer.

Sharon is taking a gig with KPBS in San Diego, where she'll learn even more about new media, radio and television under a grant underwritten by a nonprofit.

Unfortunately, Sharon and Dani won't be the last to leave. And if this keeps up, I may end up playing for an empty deck aboard the Titanic.

Go Cubs!

2008-12-07T16:55:00.000-08:00

I'm no financial expert, but this would seem to rule out Sam Zell as a potential new owner of The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The New York Times (Dec. 7, 2008)
Tribune has hired bankruptcy advisers as the ailing newspaper company faces a potential bankruptcy filing, people briefed on the matter said.

The newspaper, which was taken private last year by billionaire investor Samuel Zell, has hired advisers including Lazard and Sidley Austin, one of its longtime law firms, these people said. Tribune has been hobbled by debt related to that sale last year, which has been compounded by the growing drought of advertising for newspapers.

It is only the latest — and biggest — sign of duress for the newspaper industry yet. Several newspaper companies have struggled to cope with declining revenues and mounting debt woes. Tribune has pared back the newsrooms of many of its papers, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun, and it sold off Newsday to Cablevision’s Dolan family earlier this year.

While Tribune must contend with hefty interest payments over the next year, its most pressing problem is a maintenance covenant on some of its debt that limits the company’s borrowings to no more than nine times earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization.

Even if the company continues to make interest payments, failure to maintain that level of debt means technical default — which does not always lead to a bankruptcy filing. Other newspaper publishers have halted making interest payments on their debt, but have yet to file.

Tribune has sought to ameliorate its woes by selling off assets like the Chicago Cubs, the company still faces a looming debt crunch. Tribune hired Lazard several weeks ago to assess its options, these people said. Sidley Austin is a longtime outside adviser to Tribune, and it has a well-respected bankruptcy practice as well.

–Michael J. de la Merced, Richard Pérez-Peña and Andrew Ross Sorkin

The Overlook Hotel

2008-11-27T19:24:00.000-08:00

Often forgotten among the additional stress, additional work and additional drinking that go hand in hand with smaller, "more-with-less" staffs in a shrinking newsroom are the intangibles. Like the dearth of personality manifested through a lack of photographs.

You don't need a private detective to figure me out. Just look at the pictures and whatnot on my desk. That I'm a father of three who loves The Simpsons and going to baseball games across the country is obvious to any dolt who might happen by. The autographed photograph of Taj Mahal says something about my taste in blues. And the sheet music for Nearer, My God, to Thee, goes to the heart of my irreverance.

But there are a lot of empty desks in newsrooms these days, and on my worse days, it seems like our workplace is somewhat reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel. But instead of empty rooms and countless ghosts, we work in a venue with a whole lotta vacant desks -- and countless ghosts.

Those desks were occupied not long ago by people who had lives outside the newsroom. And those lives were reflected on the pictures and children's artwork that were plastered in their cubicles. I miss walking by Liz Fitzsimons' desk and seeing pictures of her beloved Natalie growing year by year. Or handpainted works of something or other from Miranda Barfield to her father, Chet, that underscored a daughter's undying love for her father. Or the smiling photos of Alex Roth shortly after he met a wonderful woman who would beccome his wife. Or the endless supply of almonds on Ray Kipp's desk, in an office surrounded by whimsical, um, art. Everyone has their little space, and how each person decorated that space, from Terry Rodgers to Cheryl Clark to Mark Sauer and Ruth McKinnie Braun, told you something about them.

I really miss that.

Listen to this...

2008-11-17T19:57:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it's better to let others tell it like it is. Like David Carr, who wrote this in The New York Times today...

By DAVID CARR
Published: November 16, 2008
In March 2007, Circuit City came up with a plan to confront softening sales and competition from online and offline retailers: fire the most talented, experienced employees.

Of course, those workers were the retail chain’s single most important point of difference from the legion of Internet retailers and general merchandisers, but in a single stroke, Philip J. Schoonover, the chief executive of Circuit City, wiped out that future.

As a pal of mine used to say when I described a particularly boneheaded course of action I had pursued, “How’d that work out for you, buddy?”

For Circuit City, not so great. The “wage management initiative” erased morale, both for employees and the folks who shopped there. Sales sank after the one-time gain from the layoffs. And last week, the company sought bankruptcy protection.

Mr. Schoonover joined his former employees in the discard box in September, a nice bit of symmetry until you factor in his $1.8 million in severance, $50,000 in outplacement services and a two-year cushion on health benefits. (The clerks axed in Wichita and Tucson got a bit less.)

In the digital age, we’re told, the critical difference between success and failure is human capital — those heartbeats and fast hands that can make a good business great. So are newspapers reacting to their downturn as Circuit City did?

Every day, Romenesko, a journalism blog at the Poynter Institute, is rife with news of layoffs at newspapers, most of the time featuring some important, trusted names. It is not the young fresh faces that are getting whacked — they come cheap — but the most experienced, proven people in the room, the equivalent of the sales clerk who could walk you through a thicket of widescreen television choices to the one that actually works for you.

Using clerks as an analogue may not be the most flattering comparison, but I have always thought of journalism as more craft than profession and tell students that it is the accumulation of experience and technique that makes a journalist valuable, not some ineffable beckoning of the muse.

Right now, the consumer has all manner of text to choose from on platforms that range from a cellphone to broadsheet. The critical point of difference journalism offers is that it can reduce the signal-to-noise ratio and provide trusted, branded information. That will be a business into the future, perhaps less paper-bound and smaller, but a very real business.

Newspapers, which began the race with a huge lead in terms of human assets, may end up just another part of the underinformed commodity of clutter.

“Circulation declines were deeper in the last period, and I have to say that I think it has to do with the quality problems from cuts,” said Ken Doctor, a media analyst at Outsell Inc., a market analysis firm. “It is not just the cutting, but the cutting of more-experienced staff, a kind of slow-motion suicide. Circuit City cut its own throat by not realizing what their competitive advantage is, and newspapers are doing the same thing.”

Last week, Media General, a company that owns newspapers, television stations and Web sites in the Southeast, eliminated 80 positions in Florida, including a prominent columnist and the editorial page editor at The Tampa Tribune. “The Book of Ruth,” a long-running wiseacre feature by the longtime columnist Dan Ruth, will be missed, now and then. He and the editorial page editor, Rosemary Goudreau, follow a political columnist, Joe Brown, the movie critic Bob Ross and the classical music critic Kurt Loft to the exit.

Readers, especially the ones cranky and serious enough to still be buying newspapers, have not missed the trend.

“Fire your best employees and watch your business go out of business, just like Circuit City is finding out right now. Who wants to read old news when one can find quality articles outside of the TampaTribe. Bye Bye TampaTrib, you have fired one too many of your excellent personnel and now I am firing you!” said a reader, Bob, in a comment posted to The Feed blog at TampaBay.com, a media blog by Eric Deggans, a media and television reporter at The St. Petersburg Times.

Yes, the revenue picture is grim and growing grimmer. The biggest outlay besides putting the printed artifact on the street is salaries. And journalists tend to get a lot more indignant when the sheet cake and goodbye speeches are being served up on behalf of people who have the same job as they have.

But there is a business argument to be made here. Having missed the implications of the Web and allowed both their content and their audience to be scraped away by aggregators and ad networks, newspapers are now working furiously to maintain audience, build new ad models and renovate presentation. But they won’t stay relevant to readers with generic content ginned up by newbies with no background in the communities they serve.

“Newspapers are aimed at the movers and shakers in a community — the car dealers, the retailers, the restaurant owners,” said Alan D. Mutter, a technology and media consultant who blogs at Reflections of a Newsosaur (www.newsosaur.blogspot.com). “When they get together and realize that they are looking at the paper, that it is less compelling than it used to be, it creates a vicious cycle of weaker readership and weaker advertising.”

Last week, Sam Zell, a one-man newspaper wrecking crew running the Tribune Company, was interviewed at the FourSquare conference, the annual conclave of media moguls put on by Steve Rattner. I was not there, but I spoke to two people — neither of them journalists — who listened and were appalled by his disregard for his newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times.

Based on my conversation with those attendees, Mr. Zell, who, through a spokesman, declined to comment, suggested that newsrooms were just so much overhead and that what was ailing the industry was overweening journalistic ambition. I’ve read Mr. Zell’s products since he took over. I’ve seen his handiwork, including laying off Lynell George at The Los Angeles Times and Jeffrey Meitrodt at The Chicago Tribune, just two of the many veterans I happen to know he has sacrificed on the altar of debt service.

Newspapers confront tall, menacing seas in the coming year, but it is a sure bet that the ones that dump the ablest hands on deck will be among the first to sink below the waves.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com

What do I know?

2008-11-12T20:20:00.000-08:00

The rumors have been swirling on the blogoshphere for weeks. Sam Zell. Dean Singleton. The Black Press. Those are but three of the suitors who are the imminent new owners of The San Diego Union-Tribune -- if you believe what you read in the media.

But the intensity of the talk, and the concern among people associated with the paper, has picked up in recent days, and the ongoing uncertainty has been more than a bit unsettling. The most persistent discussion is that someone has bought the paper and the sale will be announced on Friday. Then the ax will fall, and a whole lotta people will be laid off.

The fact that the country is suffering through what is arguably the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression doesn't give folks who eschewed the most recent round of buyouts much confidence.

Me? As Micky Sach's father says in Hannah and Her Sisters, `What do I know? I can't even figure out how to fix this damn can opener!'

But plug on I must. I'm getting paid a decent salary to help produce three sections of the paper and manage a team of six reporters and news assistants, not to speculate on something I cannot control. And I'm pretty damn proud of my work. Perhaps, in a few weeks, Sam Zell, Dean Singleton or some other schlub will conclude the paper could do just fine without me, thank you very much, but until then, I know of only one way: never cheat your employer.

It sounds corny, and it no doubt is, but my mother always said that whatever happens, happens for the best. She said it when I separated from my first wife, and I ended up later marrying someone I love and care about more than I could ever imagine. She said it when my Lakers got beat by an inferior Celtics team in the 1984 NBA Finals, and L.A came back with a vengeance the following season, beginning a run of three championships in four years. She said it when I screwed up on my SAT, and I ended up taking the ACT instead, ranking in top percentile in the country and getting accepted, honors at entrance, at every school I applied to.

So I'm sticking with the old Russian lady's sage advice, secure in the knowledge that whatever happens, happens for the best.

Nearer, My God, to Thee

2008-10-20T20:12:00.000-07:00

One is an FBI agent investigating mortgage fraud and other financial crimes in Los Angeles. Another is in New York, an editor at ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. A third is going to graduate school at USC while working for that university's media relations department.

All are among the scores of reporters and editors who have left The San Diego Union-Tribune during the newspaper industry's unprecedented freefall.

Some of us are hanging on, determined to stay with the ship wherever it may lead. Others are determined to lead the ship back to profitable waters. And still others are desperately trying to find another line of work, something more secure in an insecure economy.

But the John Gilmores, Gerry Brauns, Anna Cearleys and Susan Whites of the U-T have already made their break, and are doing quite well, thank you.

John Gilmore, a longtime editor at the paper who had been here so long he was among those who covered the 1978 PSA plane crash over North Park, took a buyout two years ago. Old enough to get senior discounts on his lunches at Denny's and monthly passes on the San Diego Trolley (OK, he's 63!), John wasn't quite sure what to do when the initial buyout offer was made to those with 30 years of experience. But he had an idea.

"My intent at that time was to work with special education kids," John told me during a recent conversation. "I had some interviews and was going to go in that direction."

It would be a part-time job, but before it came to fruition, a more lucrative opportunity arose. He got a call from a former co-worker, who was heading the communications department at the Port of San Diego. She had been promoted and needed a replacement. Today, John is a communications manager for the Port, dealing with pesky reporters (some of whom he used to supervise), writing, developing a newsletter and engaging in some serious consulting work.

"It's been a great learning experience," he said. "I've been able to learn new things, I've been energized. It's a breath of fresh air."

And what about his previous life?

"I miss the people, and there have been occasions where I miss being in a newsroom. It's a stimulating experience...But seeing the direction of the business, I don't have any regrets.

Neither does Anna Cearley, former Border Team reporter extraordinaire.

"I think some people were surprised I took the buyout, but I had already been considering other options for about a year when I started to realize things were changing drastically in the newspaper industry. I saw a greater emphasis on multimedia, which I was starting to learn on my own and through the U-T, and less room in the paper for the kinds of explanatory border stories that I had been able to do in the past. Even if things had been going great in the news business, I still would have been restless. I had been doing the border crime beat for seven years and I was thinking it was time for a change, but I wasn't really interested in doing any other beat at the paper. Towards the end of 2007, I applied for a job with USC's media relations department and also applied for a graduate program at USC on the creation and management of online communities. Both of them seemed to be attractive opportunities to broaden my skill base and redirect my career under the current uncertain circumstances. When the buyout offer came up in December I realized that I had the money to go to graduate school and this seemed like a sign that I should take the leap. I ended up getting the USC job six months later."

She continued:

"In my job, I put a lot of my reporting skills to use. I look for possible story ideas in the areas of education and public policy based on the work of USC researchers. I either write these stories for our web site and/or pitch the ideas to reporters. I read research papers and try to convert them into "regular" English with a stronger emphasis on "why this is important." I work with faculty to encourage them to formulate ideas for editorials and to find ways to express their thoughts in a way that doesn't read like an academic paper."

In graduate school, she's working with two classmates to design a small social network site under the direction of a Yahoo! product management director. "I'm also learning a lot about the very forces that have contributed to the problems in the newspaper industry. I don't like all that is being done by the online world, but I see how important it will be for the media to embrace innovation in upcoming years."

Any regrets?

"Between work, school, blogging and family obligations I don't have much time to dwell on the past. I do feel sad for what's happening in the journalism industry. I think the profession is a noble one and it plays a vital role in making sure there are proper checks and balances in our system. To be totally honest, I loved my job at the Union-Tribune and appreciated greatly the opportunities the company gave me. Covering the border over the past seven years was a deeply satisfying time of my life."

The note about the profession being a noble one brings to mind what one departing editor said when she left, just before the buyouts and layoffs began. Karen Ristine noted she was leaving one calling, but embracing another: She's now a Methodist minister in Mission Valley.

Indeed, those who have left are doing quite well. Former metro reporter Liz Neely just landed a job as an investigator for a law firm. Former business reporter Craig Rose is working for City Attorney Mike Aguirre. Former columnist Gerry Braun is working for Mayor Jerry Sanders. Former reporters Chet Barfield and Mark Sauer are working for Councilwoman Donna Frye. Former North County reporter Lisa Petrillo is working at Children's Hospital. And the list go on.

As for me, I'm with the group determined to help lead this ship to more settled seas. And if the Titanic goes down, I have the sheet music to Nearer, My God, to Thee on my desk. I'll play the violin.

A parable

2008-10-02T20:31:00.000-07:00

Jimmy Carter was midway through his first year as president, the Garvey-Lopes-Russell-and-Cey infield was entering its prime and our family was thriving. My sister, her husband, my brother and I lived in a Los Feliz apartment with my mom, and we couldn't be tighter. Each motivated another. We shared a vision for the future. Heck, we were even in the midst of an expansion - my sister was pregnant with her first child.

Almost as suddenly, it ended.

The first domino to fall was my sister and her husband. The economy was in the crapper and my brother-in-law had a job waiting for him in a Reno ski factory. Off they went, and suddenly, home seemed a bit emptier, like an office after a round of layoffs.

Laughter wasn't as easy to find.

The next to leave was my older brother, to law school in San Francisco. Suddenly, the leadership - the moral compass - was missing. And the office seemed emptier.

When I left for college in San Diego, only my mom and our dog remained in that old apartment from where the cacophony of one of Los Angeles's busiest streets was a constant.

With no one helping to cook the meals, wash the clothes or take the dog out for her daily walks, life for my mom became more of a series of daily chores. Much of the enjoyment of being in that apartment had gone.

Final words

2008-09-29T07:23:00.000-07:00

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.

A nonprofit suffers

2008-09-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

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.

empty shelves

2008-09-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

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.

The fallout

2008-09-18T07:47:00.000-07:00

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

Psycho

2008-09-16T20:36:00.000-07:00

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."

Losing your voice

2008-09-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

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.

Selling our soul

2008-09-11T20:09:00.000-07:00

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."

Ruminations of a dinosaur

2008-09-06T22:23:00.000-07:00

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.