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Bloodbath tallied: 40 Baltimore Sun newsroom employees laid off

April 29, 2009 at 10:52 pm 1

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The slashing, which trimmed 20 percent of the newsroom staff, followed the layoff of 21 senior editors and newsroom managers on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to a press release issued by the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild and a Sun spokeswoman, who spoke to the Associated Press.

Guild and newsrooms sources described the yesterday’s layoffs, which moved beyond editors to Guild-covered workers.

Among those axed: five photographers, four columnists, critics, graphics and page design staff and copy editors.

Some familiar bylines you won’t be seeing in the Sun, it seems: music critic Rashod Ollison, sportswriters Rick Maese and David Steele. In some cases, classifications have been changed: Mary McCauley moved from critic to reporter, Laura Vozzella and Peter Hermann moved from columnist to reporter.
(David Ettlin has a detail-rich post about the layoffs today on his blog, “The Real Muck.”)

There was turmoil and tearful outbursts in the building today, as reporters struggled to figure out who was in, who was out, all the while covering demanding stories including a watermain break that snarled trains up and down the Northeast corridor and swine flu cases detected now in Maryland.

Reporter Gus Sentementes, a Guild mobilizer, was organizing a members-only jobs website, to offer employment resources and connect laid-off journalists to potential employers.

Meanwhile, outside the newsroom, a listserv for former Evening Sun journalists was lit up all day with angry posts.

“Why is LoLordo still listed in today’s paper as Opinion Editor? Also Larry Williams as deputy? And Paul Moore?” one wrote, referring to three editors who had been laid off and ushered out of the building the day before.

“Because there are no editors left to make those changes,” another replied drily.

Here’s the Guild release:
TRIBUNE CO. ANNOUNCES PLANS TO LAYOFF 27 PERCENT OF THE BALTIMORE SUN’S NEWSROOM STAFF, INCLUDING FOUR COLUMNISTS
Layoff notices comes as Tribune slashes 18 senior editors and newsroom managers on Tuesday and Wednesday without warning.

BALTIMORE, Md., April 29, 2009 – Members of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper
Guild said yesterday that Tribune Co. is bent on gutting what was once one of America’s great newspapers after 40 newsroom employees, or 20 percent of the staff, received layoff notices yesterday.

The move comes a day after Tribune fired 18 senior editors and newsroom managers on Tuesday and Wednesday without warning. Many of the editors and managers, who are not members of the newspaper guild, were ushered out of the newsroom by security guards.

“Tribune, through careless management practices, has saddled itself under $13 billion in debt and now Baltimore is paying a price,” said Cet Parks, Executive Director of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. “Tribune is siphoning good jobs from Baltimore and sending work that talented editors, reporters, photographers, copy editors and designers have done here to its home base in Chicago. That is not right.”

Tribune plans to lay off the 40 newsroom employees by May 27. Targeted employees, who include four columnists, photographers, critics and copy editors, received hand delivered letters Wednesday afternoon signed by Monty Cook, senior vice president and editor. Also, in the last two weeks The Sun has laid off seven employees in other departments including advertising and customer service.

Since Tribune acquired The Sun in 1999, the newsroom staff has been cut by more than 60 percent to currently 148 employees from roughly 420.

  • Mark Adams

    The deposed Sun staffers should create a twice-weekly tab for free distribution. The local advertising market could support something of this nature if the cost structure was kept under control.

    The tabloid format would be desirable for logistical reasons. A tabloid is much easier to distribute than a broadsheet. The Examiner’s business model wasn’t a terrible idea. Their problem was that they distributed a News American-type product in traditional Sunpapers neighborhoods. They also ran six days a week, which was too frequent to be supported by advertisers. (No advertiser wants to run in a Monday paper. People in the business need to just understand that fact and work around it.)

    The fundamental problem with The Sun, as a business and not as a civic institution, is that Reg Murphy created a big-city cost structure in a market that was deteriorating to middle tier size. Times-Mirror and Tribune followed his lead.

    None of The Sun’s major non-editorial activities of the past 25 years have made any economic sense. Among other things, they built Sun Park (with big gov’t subsidies) without a plan for reuse of the vacated space on Calvert St. They bought Patuxent for a ridiculous price and ran it into the ground. They built a second printing plant for Patuxent in Belair, while Sun Park was running at a fraction of its capacity. While this was happening, the private sector economy in Baltimore was shutting down. Car dealers, nonprofits and realtors cannot support the cost structure created by these expenditures.

    The Sun also alienated its advertisers with high-handedness and fake circulation numbers. The difference between the circ fraud at Newsday and the business practices at The Sun was only a matter of scale.

    A twice-weekly tab would work, if someone with a realistic sense of the advertising market put it together. A “gray” tabloid, with a format similar to that of the Baltimore Business Journal, would be well-received in this town.

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