Except for one moment, it was a gloomy gathering: more than 40 editors, page designers, copy editors, photographers and other Baltimore Sun staffers gathered in a basement meeting room to get the basic primer for the newly-laid-off: how to file for unemployment benefits, hang on to health benefits, get help writing a resume or “retooling yourselves.”

 Still reeling from the experience of an abrupt layoff of 61 people last week – in which many were told on deadline to vacate the building, many found the idea of “retooling” still a bit hard to swallow.

“I’ve been in the business more or less since I was 12 years old,” said a former Sun editor, Patricia Fanning, following the mini job fair and information session hastily thrown together by the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild.
The one moment? It came when Guild officials announced the plan to withhold their bylines in today’s paper. A cheer went up around the room — there were whistles, shouts and applause.

“The byline strike is to call attention to the callous way in which reporters and editors, both Guild and non-Guild employees were treated last week,” said Gus Sentementes, a Guild mobilizer, said after the meeting. “It’s not the way a good corporate citizen, running a beloved 172-year-old institution in this city, should treat its most loyal employees.”