Quote of the day: All the news that’s gone AWOL

Via media blogger Dan Kennedy at Media Nation, a quote from recently laid off reporter James Craven, late of GateHouse Media’s Norwich [Connecticut] Bulletin on the devastating community impacts of radically downsized newsrooms:

The thing about reduced community coverage is that you do not notice it while it is happening. It is, if I may be so bold, like a cancer. It works below the surface, until one day when suddenly it becomes all too apparent. There will be referendums that may not be covered as fully. Some school functions — that first grade play that in the past featured your son or daughter — will be bypassed. On holidays, like Veterans Day, decisions will be made to forfeit coverage in some communities because there just is not an extra reporter.

Read the rest.

Mainstream media furious at Bloomberg, NYPD

Okay, first off, we thought of leading with a headline with something like this:

MSM bosses furious their reporters
treated like blacks, browns, Muslims

Because, let’s face it, the treatment dealt out to the star reporters of the corporate media aren’t much different from the way minorities are often treated by police.

That said, we’re glad the media bosses are righteously and rightfully angry at the way their reporters have been beaten, abused, and arrested while covering the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

And they’ve expressed their outrage in a letter to the Deputy New York Police Commissioner in charge of media relations.

Joining them in their outrage are the New York Civil Liberties Union [NYCLU] and a newly formed organization, the Coalition for the First Amendment.

We bring you the texts of the letters and the first statement by the new coalition, via the NYCLU website.

Letter from mainstream media organizations

From George Freeman, vice president and assistant general counsel of the New York Times Company to NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Paul J. Browne, the document is posted online here [PDF].

Dear Deputy Commissioner Browne,

The signatories below wish to express their profound displeasure, disappointment and concern over the recent actions taken against the media during the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations near and around Zuccotti Park. Over the past few months we have tried to work with DCPI to improve police-press relations. However, if anything, the police actions of last week have been more hostile to the press than any other event in recent memory. Indeed, in vivid contrast to the spirit and substance of our meeting in August, the credentialed press were targeted and subject to increased scrutiny and greater restrictions than members of the general public.

According to reports from our clients, credentialed media were identified, segregated and kept away from viewing, reporting on and photographing vital matters of public concern. A press pen was set up blocks away and those kept there were further prevented from seeing what was occurring by the strategic placement of police buses around the perimeter. Moreover, there have been numerous instances where police officers struck or otherwise intentionally impeded photographers as they were taking photos, keeping them from doing their job and from documenting instances of seeming police aggression.

The following are but a few of many examples of police behavior that clearly violates NYPD policies and procedures as concerns the media. Upon request we will provide many other similar examples of police overreaching their authority.

• On 11/15 during the “eviction” of Zuccotti Park, a member of DCPI called out to all members of the press. He asked “who had credentials?” and then instructed those who did to leave the park immediately or be subject to arrest. At this point there were several hundred people and police officers inside the park. After making his announcement a Community Affairs member grabbed one newspaper photographer and dragged him from the park. At the same time this Community Affairs officer also threatened to arrest another credentialed photographer for being inside the park.
• A female photographer, who was carrying clearly visible DCPI-issued press credentials, was taking photos of protestors near the corner of Pine and Williams Streets about 9AM on 11/17/2001. At one point, an officer (recognizing that she was a member of the media) advised her to move to the sidewalk to avoid being caught up in the police action. As she moved towards the sidewalk, another officer told her to move to the sidewalk on the other side of the road. A short time later, before she got to any sidewalk, she was grabbed by a third officer and thrown to the ground, hitting her head on the pavement.
• A female reporter, also displaying DCPI-issued press credentials, was standing with a group of photographers at a barricade on Cedar Street, between Broadway and Trinity Place, about 12 PM on 11/17/2011 when a group of police officers moved towards them and started pushing the group back. One officer, described by the reporter as very tall (approximately 6’5″), shoved the reporter with both his arms, forcing the reporter to fall backwards, landing on her right elbow, and resulting in her yelling in pain. The reporter said the officer then proceeded to pick her up by the collar while yelling “stop pretending.” The reporter went to Bellevue Hospital for treatment of her injuries.
• Another incident occurred that same day near the west end of the park where a photographer, standing on the sidewalk on Trinity Place, was photographing a man the police were carrying from somewhere in the park who was covered in blood. The photographer was standing behind a metal barrier 20 to 30 yards from the scene. As he raised his camera to take a picture two other police officers came running toward him, grabbed a metal barrier and forcefully lunged at him striking the photographer in the chest, knees and shin. As they did that they screamed that he was not permitted to be taking pictures on the sidewalk — the most traditionally recognized public forum aside from a park.
• There are numerous other reports of DCPI-issued credentials being seized from reporters and photographers, others being interfered with, detained and arrested. That they were never formally charged still does not mitigate the fact that their detention prevented them from carrying out their journalistic functions.

During our August meeting you promised to review our complaints regarding certain incidents that were provided to you in writing. You also agreed that additional training to reinforce media guidelines, for newer officers on the force, would be beneficial. In order to avoid verbal discrepancies over DCPI-Press issues you requested that both you and Lt. Whyte be immediately notified by email of any future incidents. Our first attempt to follow that procedure during Hurricane Irene was met with silence. Despite three followup letters there has been no action on your part — not even the courtesy of a reply. We firmly believe that had such agreed upon training occurred, it may have helped avoid the numerous inappropriate, if not unconstitutional, actions and abuses the police heaped upon both credentialed  and non-credentialed journalists in the last few days.

Therefore, we request an immediate meeting with you and Police Commissioner Kelly so that we may have full and frank discussions in order to resolve these issues and prevent further deterioration of the police-press relationship which is so critical to an informed public.

Thank you for your attention in this matter, I look forward to receiving your timely response.

Very truly yours,

George Freeman

Michael Cameron, The New York Post
George Osterreicher, National Press Photographers Association [NPPA]
Anne B. Carroll, The Daily News
Shmuel Bulka, Thomson Reuters
Karen Kaiser, Associated Press
Townsend Davis, WABC
Steve Chung, NBC Universal WNBC
Nicholas E. Poser, WCBS-TV
Lucy Dalglish, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Gabe Pressman, The New York Press Club

The letter from the Civil Liberties Union

Here’s the text of the letter from the NYCLU sent to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and posted online here [PDF].

Re: NYPD Mistreatment of Journalists

Dear Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly:

On behalf of the New York Civil Liberties Union, we write in conjunction with the letter sent today by major media organizations to NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne objecting to the serious mistreatment of j ournalists seeking to cover the policing of the Occupy Wall Street protests. We believe the Mayor’s Office must become directly involved in this matter, given the serious First Amendment issues raised by the media organizations and given the Police Department’s failure to address those issues since learning of them many months ago, We therefore request that Mayor Bloomberg convene a meeting with the media organizations, Commissioner Kelly and Mr. Browne, and the NYCLU.

As you undoubtedly are aware, there have been many public accounts of reporters, photographers, and other journalists being mistreated and subjected to physical force during OWS protests and further of over 25 journalists being arrested, We also have received many direct reports from journalists describing mistreatment that

Major changes underway in California mediascape

Two of California’s oldest newspapers have been sold, and a reclusive Canadian media mogul is at the heart of both deals.

We’ll look at the sales of the San Francisco Examiner and the San Diego Union-Tribune, and finish up with the sale of a smaller paper.

San Francisco Examiner sold

Once home to such legendary scribes as Mark Twain, Jack London, and Ambrose Bierce and the flagship of the Hearst chain, the 148-year-old Examiner was sold off in 2000 as part of the deal that allowed the Hearsts to buy the longtime archival San Francisco Chronicle.

The paper was bought by the Fang family of San Francisco, which made the paper a giveaway in 2003.

In 2004 the Examiner wound up in the hands of Denver-based Clarity Media, owned by Philip Anschutz, a zealous theocon and a leading funder of creationist propaganda.

Mark Harden of the Denver Business Journal reports on Anschutz’s strategy and its outcome:

The Denver billionaire distributed the San Francisco paper daily for free in high-income neighborhoods of the city and its immediate suburbs. Anschutz’s Clarity Media introduced a similar paper, the Washington Examiner, in the nation’s capital later in 2004 and followed with the Baltimore Examiner in 2006.

Clarity also trademarked the Examiner name in nearly 70 other markets, including Denver, leading to speculation that Anschutz was planning a nationwide chain of free newspapers.

But the national chain never materialized. Eventually, home delivery of the three Examiners was cut back, and the Baltimore Examiner was shut down in early 2009.

Read the rest.

Calculating the circulation of the Anschutz-era Examiner would take someone with a doctorate in statistics, given the way the paper is distributed and the lack of indepent verification. They claim [PDF] a total of 255,527 on Sundays, 199,088 on Thursdays, 101,369 on Fridays, and 75,009 Monday through Wednesday.

To boost their advertising revenues, the paper distributes its freebie only to higher-income census tracks.

Now the paper is being sold again, this time to a consortium headed by Black Press Group Ltd. of Victoria, British Columbia, which owns some 170+ papers in the U.S. and Canada, including the Akron Beacon Journal and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. According to the business website Manta, the company most recent revenue report listed an income of $113,351,680.

The new corporate owner, Canadian David Holmes Black, has managed to keep a singularly low media profile, and has largely escaped the attention of Wikipedia, which offers only a 93-word profile.

The best article we could locate is a Don Ward article in Seattle Weekly, written after Black’s takeover of a 60-paper chain of community papers in the Puget Sound region.

The Associated Press reports that the terms of the sale haven’t been disclosed, adding

Clarity CEO Ryan McKibben said it no longer made sense for the company to own the Examiner, its only newspaper on the West Coast. The publisher is now focusing its resources on the Washington, D.C. market and its recent acquisition of The Oklahoman newspaper, he said.

“In Black Press we found a publisher with a successful track record, and a strong commitment to highly localized reporting,” McKibben said.

David Black, president of the company based in Victoria, British Columbia, said: “We are delighted to become involved with such a strong newspaper. Readership is second to none in San Francisco and on the peninsula.”

The deal is expected to close on Nov. 30.

Read the rest.

Buying one California paper, Black Group sells another

When ensl first started reporting in the Golden State back in 1968, San Diego had two newspapers, the Union and the Tribune, both owned by the mossback conservative Copley family.

The papers were later consolidated into a single entity, then sold by the Copleys to a private equity firm, Platinum Equity, in 2009.

Now the paper — with a weekday circulation of 218,614 at last report — has been sold again, this time to a company owned by another mossback who was a major funder of Proposition 8, the successful statewide ballot initiative to ban gay marriage, as noted in this from the New York Times report on the sale:

The Manchester Financial Group, its Web site says, has a range of investments including two of the largest hotels in the United States: the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego and the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina. Mr. Manchester’s hotels were the target of a boycott in 2008 over his $125,000 donation to support a ballot initiative in California to prohibit same-sex marriage in the state.

And now for the sale. First up, the story on the sale from Ron Davis of voiceofsandiego.org

Hotelier Doug Manchester bought the San Diego Union-Tribune on Thursday, returning the paper to local ownership in a sale that would appear to turn a big profit for a private equity firm that bought it two years ago.

In a brief interview, Manchester said he paid “above” $110 million for

The parallax problem: Cal, cops, and credibility

Via Wikipedia

In one of our earliest journalism jobs, we toted around a wonderful camera, a Rolleiflex 120, that yielded some of the most stunning photos we’ve ever captured.

There was just one problem. The Rollei was a twin-lens reflex camera. The photos were taken through the lower lens, while you saw your images through the upper lens, projected onto a ground glass screen.

For photos taken from six feet or more away, there wasn’t a problem. But for closer work, the image your eye saw and the image that made it onto the film were different. Photographers called it the parallax problem.

In effect, the same instrument provided two different views of the same event.

Director Alan J. Pakula would incorporate the notion into a famous film about a journalist, The Parallax View, starring Warren Beatty.

The reason we’re thinking of parallax is a pair of items appearing reflecting parallax views of the UC Berkeley Police violence last week.

Through one lens, the scent of history

First, the take on events from UC Berkeley law prof Jonathan Simon, writing at his blog Governing Through Crime:

UC Berkeley’s leadership has once again over reacted to student demonstrations by calling out not just the campus police, but the infamous Alameda County Sheriff’s officers (the Blue Meanies of the 1960s) who as so many times before marched in like the Imperial storm troopers in Star Wars and beat students for no apparent reason. What possible reason was there for this senseless creation of disorder that outstripped the disorder it was intended to prevent by a significant degree? Why was preventing a tent encampment on Sproul Plaza deemed a matter of urgency sufficient to risk the injury or even death of students and other protesters? What better place is there for such an encampment than Sproul plaza, a space dedicated to free speech? It is also a space where students can easily participate in a potentially historically important moment of democratic awakening in this country, and without having to miss classes (and which prevents no one else from attending classes or getting to their lab or library as building occupations do).

Our students (as well as everyone else here) are facing the worst economy since the Great Depression, and the rapid disappearance of a public higher education that was delivered to the generations of Californians. The protest sought to tie the rapid decline of public higher education to the disastrous financial crisis brought on by the casino capitalism promoted by the financial industry for its own benefit. They deserve our sympathy and our support, not a boot or a baton in the face.

Read the rest.

The second lens, seen from the top

And in case you missed it, UCB Chancellor Robert “Grinnin’ Bob” Birgeneau has staged a tactical retreat from his own police department, announcing an amnesty for most of those arrested during the Great Police Raid of 2011.

Here’s the text of the letter posted to the campus NewsCenter website Monday:

Dear Cal Campus Community:

I returned to Berkeley yesterday after a week-long trip to Seoul, Tokyo and Shanghai where we successfully advanced some important new partnerships that will benefit our campus.

While away, I remained in intermittent contact with Provost George Breslauer and other members of our leadership team and was kept informed, as much as possible, about the Occupy Cal activities on campus. However, it was only yesterday that I was able to look at a number of the videos that were made of the protests on Nov. 9. These videos are very disturbing. The events of last Wednesday are unworthy of us as a university community. Sadly, they point to the dilemma that we face in trying to prevent encampments and thereby mitigate long-term risks to the health and safety of our entire community.

Most certainly, we cannot condone any excessive use of force against any members of our community. I have asked Professor Jesse Choper, our former Dean of Law, and current Chair of the Police Review Board (PRB) to launch immediately a review of the police actions of last Wednesday and Thursday morning. As is normal process, University Police Chief Mitch Celaya is concurrently undertaking an operational review of last week’s events. He has requested that it be conducted by a senior member of the command staff at one of our sister UC campuses. This report will be provided to the PRB. I am confident that Professor Choper will provide a fair and balanced judgment as speedily as possible.

We believe that we can best move forward by granting amnesty from action under the Student Code of Conduct to all Berkeley students who were arrested and cited solely for attempting to block the police in removing the Occupy Cal encampment on Wednesday, Nov. 9. We will do so immediately.

I believe that as a campus community we can and must join together and focus on our common goals – inducing the state to reinvest in public education, working to repeal Prop. 13, finding a way to reverse Prop. 209, and instituting reforms that will help California regain its status as the door to the American Dream through public higher education. Thanks to the efforts of our students who worked effectively with Assemblyman Cedillo, myself and other members of our campus community, we were able to ensure that the legislature in Sacramento passed AB 130 and AB 131 which Gov. Brown ultimately signed. This example of successful and peaceful activism with students and campus leaders working together can guide us in how we can collaborate to effect real change that will benefit us all. We share the aspirations of the Occupy movement for a better America. I am confident that as a campus community we will find a peaceful and productive way forward.

Robert J. Birgeneau
Chancellor, UC Berkeley

Amazing how he strives to distance himself from the department that’s under his own jurisdiction, just as did Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, right down to the “Oh, that? I was out of town” excuse.

Birgeneau has created his own parallax universe, in which he strives to literally and figuratively distance himself from the consequences of his own actions.

But as a witness to and subject of campus police violence during the time we reported on the Memorial Stadium tree-sit and other campus demonstrations, we find it hard to believe that Birgeneau didn’t anticipate what might happened when he unleashed campus police.

Journalists’ union protests abuse by Oakland police

It.s not just protesters who are being abused by local police. The news media have been taking their share of lumps, too.

Consider the following from the website of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, a unit of the Communication Workers of America:

JimWeitkamp, a regional vice president for CWA and the union’s top officer in California and Hawaii, took Oakland authorities to task after police harrassed working press covering the Occupation Movement.

In a letter to Mayor Jean Quan and interim Police Chief Howard Jordan, Weitkamp urged police be trained to deal properly with members of the media as street actions escalate.

“Clearly, by all accounts I have seen and read, the police leadership on the ground lost both perspective and control,” Weitkamp wrote.

The letter came after BANG-East Bay photographer Ray Chavez (photo) was roughed up by police during last week’s Occupy Oakland melee.

Photo: Karl Mondon/Media Workers Guild

We’ve experienced the heavy hand of the law ourselves, in the person of an officer of the UC Berkeley Police Department.

Here’s the account published in the Berkeley Daily Planet on 18 June 2008 about what happened when we were on the paper’s staff and photographing campus police as they tried to take down treesitters protesting the planned [and later carried out] cutting down of an oak grove at California Memorial Stadium:

This Berkeley Daily Planet reporter was threatened with arrest after he questioned an officer’s order to leave the rim of the stadium, the only place where activities of the officers could be monitored.

As the reporter was leaving, he was shoved in the back by a university officer and would have fallen down the concrete stairs had not he been grabbed by Doug Buckwald, one of the long-time supporters of the tree-sit.

Officer C. Chichester, badge 36, told this reporter, who was carrying valuable camera gear, that if he were arrested, “Who knows what would happen to your camera equipment when you’re in jail?”

The stadium rim was the only place from which a journalist could have a view of the events unfolding in the grove below. It was from the rim that the reporter saw one of the cranes brush a support line, from which a tree-sitter was suspended between two evergreens at least 50 feet apart.

Millipede, the treesitters suspended from the line, screamed in terror. She was the same tree-sitter arrested hours later. University spokesperson Dan Mogulof said she had bitten one of the workers.

Zachary Running Wolf, the first of the tree-sitters, said she and other protesters had been terrified when the arborists placed a saw next to the lines from which the tree-sitters were suspended between the trees.

Had the line snapped, the protesters would have been hurled to the ground in a potentially fatal fall, and for that reason the reporter objected to the forced move.

Asked why the reporter and spectators were being moved, Chichester said, “Well, there are people down below and perhaps they feel threatened.”

The stadium rim was blocked by police crime scene tape during the encounter.

Asked the grounds for a potential arrest, Chichester said simply, “You’re trespassing.” He declined to cite a statute, and said, “You’ll be informed of that when you’re being booked at the jail.”

Read the rest.

Blood on the Newsroom Floor: And lots of it, too

First, two items that reflect on major changes underway at California newspapers, both likely to lead to more layoffs, then a look at the death of a newspaper in Florida, jobs cuts in the Big Apple, Connecticut, and Michigan, plus an also-ran in the Headline of the day competition.

Another California real estate baron publisher?

Sam Zell, one of the nation’s largest landlords, became a media mogul when he took of the Tribune Corp., publishers of papers that include the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. [He’s also Berkeley’s biggest private sector landlord, too.]

After Zell’s takeover, job cuts followed in Los Angeles.

Now another real estate tycoon is eying a California paper, this one already owned by investment bankers.

From FishbowlLA’s Newspaper Deathwatch:

Former San Diego Union-Tribune editor David Ogul tweets that real estate developer and Prop 8 backer Douglas Manchester making serious motions to buy the U-T. This certainly seems to confirm the suspicions of CounterPunch’s Frank Green, who wrote back in October that Manchester was sniffing around the paper. Counterpunch and sources we spoke with say Manchester is interested in the paper’s real estate. Which, at this point, is probably far more valuable as a potential redevelopment site than the paper itself. Could this be the beginning of the end for the Union-Tribune?

Whatever the outcome, we can be sure it doesn’t bode well for San Diego’s ink-stained wretches, nor for the community dependent on their reporting about critical events that impact their lives.

MediaNews orders more SoCal consolidation

The Denver-based MediaNews chain, which controls the largest share of newspaper circulation in California, has been relentlessly hacking away at its papers in the Northern California Bay Area News Group [BANG], invariably following up with similar moves at its Southern California coutnerpart, the Los Angeles News Group [LANG].

The name of the game for MediaNews is consolidation, stripping papers of their community context while effectively merging them into single entities dubbed “newsblobs” by Southern California journalist Gary Scott.

After the latest round of BANG consolidations, new moves are afoot at LANG, as Kevin Roderick reports for LA Observed:

When Daily News editor Carolina Garcia was named editor last month over the Daily Breeze and Press-Telegram as well, it seemed pretty clear more moves were coming. Now they have come. Today’s memo from Garcia stresses that the three papers will retain their own identities, but there will be key senior editors who oversee all three papers. In most cases, it’s someone at the Daily News who gets elevated to manage the other papers’ staffs too. For instance, the DN’s Mariel Garza becomes the senior editor over the opinion pages that all three papers will run. Also: Harrison Sheppard becomes city editor of the Daily News and Kerry Cavanaugh becomes assistant city editor.

Read the rest, including the relevant memo.

The imminent death of a Florida paper

Bad news for folks in High Springs Florida and vicinity who’ve depended on the North Florida Herald for their weekly dose of news.

According to the Gainesville Sun:

The weekly newspaper, known as the High Springs Herald until 2009, had been in print since 1952. It has a print circulation of 3,300 and an average of 2,000 unique daily visitors to its website, covering news in High Springs, Alachua, Newberry, Fort White and Jonesville in Alachua, Columbia and Gilchrist counties.

Here’s the poignant announcement of the impending demise of a 53-year-old publication:

This may be the final issue of The North Florida Herald, the one that is in the stands now.

The following is a column written by North Florida Herald editor and publisher Ronald Dupont Jr.

***

As the publisher of The North Florida Herald, this is something I never thought I would write.

Unless a financial angel comes through our doors in the next two days, The Herald will close. No issue will be published this week, and without a financial angel, no issue will be published again.

We need $120,000 to survive until December of 2012. If we could survive to then, we would have published through the very profitable months of election advertising.

Even better, maybe the economy will have started changing by then and we would be back on our feet.

That is my hope.

It’s hard to believe that High Springs elections are next week and that The Herald will not be covering them for the first time since 1952. The Herald is the second oldest operating business in town, with only Jim Douglas Sales and Service having operated longer.

I keep wondering how people will learn about what their city leaders are doing in Alachua, Newberry, High Springs and Fort White. How will people learn of proposed laws, tax rate increases, donations, fee changes, you name it?

Who will tell the people?

Read the rest.

New York Daily News slashes jobs

The Daily News isn’t exactly a shining exemplar of the best ideals of the Fourth Estate, but at least it’s been an alternative to the great grey news machine that is the New York Times.

As a so-called subway tabloid, the paper depends on splashy, well, trashy, headlines to catch the eyes of readers as the scurry to catch their morning rides. But it’s a newspaper, and as such we share the agony of the ten folks who are losing their jobs.

From the New York Post’s Keith J. Kelly:

In the latest turmoil to rattle the Daily News, about 10 reporters were axed today as the Mort Zuckerman-owned paper tries to stanch the flow of red ink.

Zuckerman invested $150 million in new four-color presses in New

Another vet seriously hurt at Occupy Oakland

And where do we go to get the details? Why, a British newspaper, The Guardian, which has much more information than any of our radically downsized local papers about the injuries sustained by an El Cerrito tavern owner.

Hmm.

From The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt:

A second Iraq war veteran has suffered serious injuries after clashes between police and Occupy movement protesters in Oakland.

Kayvan Sabehgi, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is in intensive care with a lacerated spleen. He says he was beaten by police close to the Occupy Oakland camp, but despite suffering agonising pain, did not reach hospital until 18 hours later.

Sabehgi, 32, is the second Iraq war veteran to be hospitalised following involvement in Oakland protests. Another protester, Scott Olsen, suffered a fractured skull on 25 October.

On Wednesday night, police used teargas and non-lethal projectiles to drive back protesters following an attempt by the Occupy supporters to shut down the city of Oakland.

Sabehgi told the Guardian from hospital he was walking alone along 14th Street in central Oakland – away from the main area of clashes – when he was injured.

“There was a group of police in front of me,” he told the Guardian from his hospital bed. “They told me to move, but I was like: ‘Move to where?’ There was nowhere to move.

“Then they lined up in front of me. I was talking to one of them, saying ‘Why are you doing this?’ when one moved forward and hit me in my arm and legs and back with his baton. Then three or four cops tackled me and arrested me.”

Sabeghi, who left the army in 2007 and now part-owns a small bar-restaurant in El Cerrito, about 10 miles north of Oakland, said he was handcuffed and placed in a police van for three hours before being taken to jail. By the time he got there he was in “unbelievable pain”.

He said: “My stomach was really hurting, and it got worse to the point where I couldn’t stand up.

“I was on my hands and knees and crawled over the cell door to call for help.”

A nurse was called and recommended Sabehgi take a suppository, but he said he “didn’t want to take it”.

He was allowed to “crawl” to another cell to use the toilet, but said it was clogged.

“I was vomiting and had diarrhoea,” Sabehgi said. “I just lay there in pain for hours.”

Sabehgi’s bail was posted in the mid-afternoon, but he said he was unable to leave his cell because of the pain. The cell door was closed, and he remained on the floor until 6pm, when an ambulance was called.

He was taken to Highland hospital – the same hospital where Olsen was originally taken after being hit in the head by a projectile apparently fired by police.

Read the rest.

And when it came to their own story, the Oakland Tribune could only quote The Guardian:

The Guardian is reporting that he told them he was beaten by police during a clash with law enforcement following the strike. But his claims have not been verified by authorities.

“The Oakland Police Department is conducting an investigation regarding Kayvan Sabehgi and the circumstances of his arrest on Nov. 3, 2011.” Police ask anyone with information to call 510-238-3821.

Erin Allday’s San Francisco Chronicle account also relies on second-hand quotes, and no mention is made of The Guardian‘s story.

And only The Guardian has the details.

Blood on the Newsroom Floor: Smogville layoffs

Layoffs, all from the West Coast. . .

The BANG layoff’s other edge

Unnoticed in the news about the latest layoffs at the MediaNews-owned [San Francisco] Bay Area Newsgroup is a critical fact: That while the 36 news staff reductions were six fewer than hinted at the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, and other daily and almost-daily news products [no more paper Monday papers for many subscribers (online only)], the selective harvest included two of the key figures in the BANG unit of the Media Workers Guild, which had fought hard for its members during previous layoff rounds.

Surely that’s just a coincidence, right?

The only good news was that the chain cut six fewer jobs than previously indicated, with 34 journalists getting the boot instead of 40.

More layoffs coming at the L.A. Times

One of two of the nation’s top ten metropolitan dailies owned by Sam Zell, one of the nations leading apartment landlords as well as Berkeley’s biggest, the Los Angeles Times once boasted a circulation of more than a million every weekeday, and many more on Sunday, has fared badly under Zell’s tenure.

Zell managed of finance his purchase on the backs of its workers, and layoffs followed.

Now, according to the well-informed Kevin Roderick of L.A. Observed, more are coming:

According to a couple of independent newsroom sources, Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton called meetings on Wednesday to inform affected people that the design, news operations and web operations staffs would be combined into one department, along with at least some of the copy editors. The merging would take place by the end of January and lead to 10-20 layoffs, the sources say. One of the sources said there’s also new talk of combining sections to save money.

Not reporters, but newspaper people still

While our primary concern has been ongoing layoffs of working reporters, whose work is essential to a functioning democracy, it’s also important to consider that other folks in the newspaper trade are losing work as well.

From Willamette Week’s Hannah Hoffman, bad news for Portland newspaper folk:

The Oregonian laid off about 20 business-side employees Tuesday, adding to about 38 employees the paper let go in June.

Publisher N. Christian Anderson III confirmed to WW that the paper had announced the layoffs. He wouldn’t confirm the exact number but said none of the cuts came from the newsroom staff, and that the cuts were part of the paper’s overall cost-saving strategy. Sources at the daily said executives didn’t rule out more layoffs in the future.

The Oregonian, which once pledged to its employees they would never be laid off for economic reasons, has axed more than 100 employees since 2009. In March of that year, the paper laid off 33 part-time employees. In February 2010, the paper laid off 37 full-time workers, most from the newsroom.

Read the rest.

Blood on the newsroom Floor: Layoffs abound

UPDATE: After the jump.

Today’s wrapup starts close to home with the final body count for BANG, the MediaNews-owned Bay Area News Group, the outfit which is turning what were once 12 local newspapers into an entity blogger Gary Scott has dubbed a newsblob.

BANG cuts 34 newsroom jobs

In addition to slashing jobs, the company is also closing their printing plant in Walnut Creek, and transferring all printing to San Jose.

From what we’ve learned, the final result of the latest round of reconstruction will result in what amounts to a single paper, though the mastheads of most of the locals remain, a reversal of their earlier plan.

From El Cerrito Patch:

The Bay Area News Group, which publishes the El Cerrito Journal, as well as Walnut Creek-based Contra Costa Times, the Oakland Tribune and daily newspapers serving cities throughout the East Bay, cut 34 newsroom positions Tuesday to reduce costs as it attempts to shore up its online presence.

Cuts included editor of the El Cerrito Journal and Berkeley Voice, David Boitano, and education reporter Shelly Meron who covered El Cerrito and Kensington schools as part of her beat.

Ten of the positions were via voluntary resignations; the rest were layoffs. Staff members were notified on Tuesday morning, according to employees who did not wish to be named.

>snip<

Some of the staff members who were laid off or who volunteered to leave, have worked for various divisions of the news group for as long as 30 years.

They include David Newhouse, longtime sportswriter and columnist for the Oakland Tribune, and Steve Waterhouse, editor of the (Fremont) Argus and the (Hayward) Daily Review. Also laid off were Barry Caine, former movie critic for the Oakland Tribune and an entertainment editor for the Contra Costa Times.

Laid off employees include reporters, newsroom clerical staff members, photographers and copy editors.

Read the rest.

And the jobs are slashed in Riverside

Gary Scott, who blogs at the papers got smaller, reports layoffs were also held at the Riverside Press-Enterprise, which is part of the A. H. Belo Corporation:

The Press-Enterprise in Riverside on Tuesday cut several newsroom staffers Tuesday. At least one of the names I was originally given turned out to be incorrect, so I’ve removed the information from this post until I can confirm exactly who was laid off.

And in Connecticut, bad news in Norwich

Via New London’s The Day:

The Bulletin announced the layoffs of seven newsroom employees in today’s edition.

The cuts include a production editor, sports staffer, news reporter, copy editor and two photographers.

Jim Konrad, executive editor, said the cuts were necessitated by “the financial strains at the corporate and site level.”

The Bulletin is owned by GateHouse Media Inc., which on Tuesday announced that it had lost $5 million last quarter.

Interesting sidenote: The Bulletin pulled its own story [though it still shows up on Google], leaving only its own variant of the 404 message, and there’s no trace of the tale on their website.

And the mayhem in Manchester

From Rachel Kaufman on of Media Jobs Daily:

The largest newspaper in New Hampshire is going to get a little smaller in the days to come.

After the Manchester News Guild unanimously rejected the Union-Leader’s proposal to cut pay by 10 percent, cut sick time and increase the workweek, the newspaper says it must achieve cost savings through other means: layoffs.

The Union-Leader will cut six positions, including three senior reporters, sometime in early November, reports NHPR— New Hampshire public radio. The 10 percent pay cut will also take effect anyway.

This comes two years after staff already accepted a double-digit pay cut, NHPR says. It leaves workers making 22% less than they did in 2008.

Tax documents show, NHPR reports, that the paper’s president and publisher, Joe McQuaid, took a pay cut in 2009.

But last year, he took in more than he did pre-cut.

Not jobs, but bad numbers just the same

Way back in the early Holocene when esnl reported for the San Monica Evening Outlook, we interviewed then-Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler, whose dream was to publish America’s largest paper.

At the time, he was well on the way, and by 1990, the Times was the country’s leading metropolitan daily, with a weekday circulation of 1,225,189 and 1,514,096 on Sundays.

But no more.

After Otis retired, the paper headed rapidly downhill, thanks in part to the former General Mills executive brought in to replace him, and then by a disastrous takeover by real estate mogul Sam Zell [who’s also Berkeley largest private landlord].

Now the latest grim news from Kevin Roderick of L.A. Observed:

The daily circulation of the printed Los Angeles Times was 572,998 in the latest audited numbers released [Tuesday]. It used to be well over

BANG consolidation plan, layoffs, go bust

UPDATE: Some titles will be combined, as George Avalos reports for the Oakland Tribune:

The Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times and several other East Bay newspapers will retain their own mastheads, and the Tribune will open two new community media laboratories in Oakland, executives of the papers’ parent company announced Thursday.

The Bay Area News Group also said it will halt home delivery on Mondays of the Oakland Tribune, The Argus and the Hayward Daily Review, starting sometime in November. The Monday papers will still be available at retail outlets, newsracks and other locations, and there will also be electronic versions.

BANG had previously planned to combine its East Bay papers into two mastheads, but reconsidered the move based on feedback from the community. The only newspapers whose mastheads will be combined are the Valley Times, Tri-Valley Herald and San Joaquin Herald, and the Oakland Tribune and the Alameda Times Star. The Valley Times, Tri-Valley Herald and San Joaquin Herald will be renamed the Tri-Valley Times. The Alameda Times Star will become part of the Oakland Tribune.

As part of Thursday’s announcement, the company also said the San Mateo County Times would retain its own masthead, rather than become part of the San Jose Mercury News.

>snip<

The number of newsroom job cuts in the East Bay, though, will be scaled back. Initially, BANG had envisioned about 40 layoffs in the 230-employee newsroom. The news group now is looking at staff cuts of about 25, along with several voluntary resignations, for a total reduction of about 14 percent of the newsroom.

The plan to consolidate all of MediaNews’s newspapers along the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay under two mastheads is dead, we’re told, as are most of the previously announced 120 layoffs.

So the Oakland Tribune will live on, as will the Contra Costa Times and most, but not all, of the existing titles [updated].

We’re glad MediaNews changed their minds and reversed one of the dumbest moves ever made by a newspaper chain.

UPDATE: We can’t help but wonder if the move wasn’t taken after somone took to heart the words of Jeff DeBalko, financial chief of Bay Area News Group [MediaNews's subdivision in the San Francisco Bay Area], posted on his blog last week after he quit the outfit:

My 71-year-old mother called me a while back and told me that she was calling to cancel her local paper (one of ours). When I asked why, she said, ‘They keep raising the rates on me. I don’t care about the money so much but there is nothing in the paper any more about my local community. They used to write about people I know, places I know, and businesses nearby. Now there is none of that.’ Nothing speaks louder to the failure of local media than a long, slow disconnect from the communities they serve.

Good news: Journalist ends career of a lying pol

Kudos to our former Berkeley Daily Planet colleague Matt Artz for reporting that has ended the career of a public who lied about his residence in order to keep his job overseeing a San Francisco Bay Area community college.

It’s the kind of good old fashioned reporting that’s so much endangered in this era of downsizing newspapers.

From his story today in the Oakland Tribune:

Longtime Ohlone College trustee Nick Nardolillo is surrendering his seat on the board as prosecutors prepare to charge him in connection with lying about being a Fremont resident so he could retain elected office.

Nardolillo’s retirement will take effect Sunday — seven months after a Bay Area News Group investigation revealed that the 64-year-old vintner had been living for more than a decade at his Livermore winery but was registering to vote at a friend’s house in Fremont, where he rented a room for $400 worth of free wine a month.

“The criminal investigation is ongoing, and I expect criminal charges to be filed in the next couple of weeks,” chief assistant district attorney Kevin Dunleavy said Tuesday.

Nardolillo, who was first elected to the Ohlone board in 1996, could face felony voter fraud charges and be forced to repay salary and health benefits he received after moving to Livermore, attorneys have said.

Leon Mezzetti Jr., Nardolillo’s attorney, said he hopes reach a settlement with prosecutors before charges are filed.

Nardolillo wasn’t available for comment Tuesday; he did not mention the residency scandal in his one-page retirement letter, which included the high points of his time on the board and a promise to “continue spreading the ‘Good News’ about Ohlone.”

He continued serving on the board during the criminal investigation and never faced public criticism from any of his fellow trustees or top college administrators.

Read the rest.

Blood on the newsroom floor: Papers, television

Today’s update on the downbeat news for the Fourth Estate ranges from alt-weekly woes to the drastic cuts underway in community television.

Venerable black-owned paper nears collapse

The sad news from Chicago concerns the sad plight of one of the nation’s first and oldest community newspapers serving urban African American communities.

From Rachel Kaufman MediaJobsDaily:

The Chicago Defender, one of the nation’s oldest black-owned newspapers, is “months” behind on its rent, the paper’s “greatest challenge” right now, publisher and president Michael House told the Chicago Sun-Times.

The only remaining editors on the 18-person staff, executive editor Lou Ransom and news editor Rhonda Gillespie, were shown the door last week as well as turning the paper’s only photographer into a part-time staffer and letting go an accounts receivable employee.

Read the rest.

More on the layoffs at the Village Voice chain

Hamilton Nolan of Gawker has been getting the scoops on layoffs at Village Voice Media, the folks who own the Big Apple’s leading “alternative paper” and a chain of other alt-weeklies, including the SF Weekly.

Here’s his latest:

Tipsters have told us of more than 20 editorial staffers at nearly a dozen VVM-owned papers who were laid off recently, for financial reason. It appears to be a top-down order to trim budgets everywhere. “We had company wide layoffs. Every paper had to lose a few people,” according to Seattle Weekly editor Mike Seely. So far, we’ve confirmed the following: at least one staff writer and one editor at the Houston Press; one staff writer at OC Weekly (“an economic decision in no way performance related,” according to the editor); one staff writer and a web editor at Seattle Weekly. We’ve left messages seeking confirmations of other layoffs at the Dallas Observer, LA Weekly, City Pages, Miami New Times, Phoenix New Times, Riverfront Times, and SF Weekly.

Hard times.

Update: We hear that the Broward/ Palm Beach New Times and the Miami New Times will each be losing a staff writer. We also hear that the entire chain is eliminating everyone holding the title of “Assistant Calendar Editor,” a position at some but not all VVM papers. Also, three editors and a reporter were laid off at SF Weekly, as detailed here.

Read the rest.

Why Not Occupy Newsrooms?

That’s the headline on a David Carr report in the New York Times that looks at the bloated salaries paid newspaper executives as their reward for their ruthless gutting of the Fourth Estate.

Carr singles out Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain:

Almost two weeks ago, USA Today put its finger on why the Occupy Wall Street protests continued to gain traction.

“The bonus system has gone beyond a means of rewarding talent and is now Wall Street’s primary business,” the newspaper editorial stated, adding: “Institutions take huge gambles because the short-term returns are a rationale for their rich payouts. But even when the consequences of their risky behavior come back to haunt them, they still pay huge bonuses.”

Well thought and well put, but for one thing: If you were looking for bonus excess despite miserable operations, the best recent example I can think of is Gannett, which owns USA Today.

The week before the editorial ran, Craig A. Dubow resigned as Gannett’s chief executive. His short six-year tenure was, by most accounts, a disaster. Gannett’s stock price declined to about $10 a share from a high of $75 the day after he took over; the number of employees at Gannett plummeted to 32,000 from about 52,000, resulting in a remarkable diminution in journalistic boots on the ground at the 82 newspapers the company owns.

Never a standout in journalism performance, the company strip-mined its newspapers in search of earnings, leaving many communities with far less original, serious reporting.

Given that legacy, it was about time Mr. Dubow was shown the door, right? Not in the current world we live in. Not only did Mr. Dubow retire under his own power because of health reasons, he got a mash note from Marjorie Magner, a member of Gannett’s board, who said without irony that “Craig championed our consumers and their ever-changing needs for news and information.”

But the board gave him far more than undeserved plaudits. Mr. Dubow walked out the door with just under $37.1 million in retirement, health and disability benefits. That comes on top of a combined $16 million in salary and bonuses in the last two years.

Read the rest.

Ryan Chittum comments on the state of Gannett in a Columbia Journalism Review blog post on Carr’s article:

Carr isn’t reaching for his Occupy analogy here. This kind of mismanagement is at the heart of the Wall Street protests. You can certainly make a business case for needing to lay off newspaper workers the last few years. Making the case for firing hundreds of low-paid proles (and actually its tens of thousands of layoffs: Carr reports Gannett’s payroll is now 32,000, down from 52,000 in just six years) while paying yourself and your COO nearly ten million dollars apiece when the stock is down 87 percent on your watch? If you want to make it, be my guest.

These practices aren’t unique to Wall Street or to Gannett in newspaperland, as Carr makes clear, and they haven’t just popped up in the Great Recession. That’s just how business is done these days.

Read the rest.

And the same chainsaws are gutting TV news

And lest you think newsroom downsizing is restricted to the newspaper realm, consider the remarks of Craig Aron, president and CEO of Free Press, a media advocacy group, on the devastation of local television newsrooms, reported by Kari Lydersen of In These Times:

[S]tations are making deals to share reporters and editorial content to cut costs. The most extreme form of consolidation is known as a “shared services agreement,” wherein one newsroom with one staff provides content for two or more stations – which presumably in the past had their own newsrooms and staff.

So in a profession wracked by job losses, “covert consolidation” has added to the carnage. Aaron listed a sample of local broadcast jobs lost: 68 in Honolulu, 30 in Peoria, 45 in Syracuse, 24 in Salt Lake City. He told In These Times:

“That’s the point of these shady deals. Cut staffs, shave costs, all the while raking in ad dollars alongside local newscasts. This attack on working journalists, broadcast engineers, even the ad department, is the reason why, among the leading opponents of covert consolidation, are unions like the Newspaper Guild and the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET).”

Aaron added that a “smaller staff means a heavier workload, though I think the biggest problem is the stories we’re missing out on. Without journalists competing and digging up stories, political scandal or corporate corruption go completely undetected.”

Read the rest.

Of course there are jobs, but. . .

The “but” being that the work available for would-be journalists through the latest model doesn’t pay a dime. For one example, see here.

Blood on the Newsroom Floor; Layoffs, questions

We’ll start and end in California, with side trips to Georgia, the Big Apple, and Old Blighty for our latest recap of bad news in the news business.

But the news isn’t all grim, and there may be a little less blood for San Francisco Bay Area newspaper lovers, as you’ll discover toward the end of the post.

But we’ll lead off with the bad news news and finish up with a little sunshine and some condolences.

MediaNews lays off more in Los Angeles

MediaNews, the Denver-based chain that owns the lion’s share of California’s daily newspaper circulation, is engaged in a new round of downsizing in the Golden State.

The Los Angeles News Group [LANG] is the name MediaNews gave to its Shakytown holdings, and the company is busily putting a new business operations model in place, where local papers surrender their autonomy to a regional core, in effect delocalizing the key decision makers.

For us it looks like a model designed to alienate the diminishing numbers of folks who actually subscribe to papers, since decisions about what to run and how to edit it will be made by folks who don’t know the individual communities.

Our first item looks at the loss of two key editors at LANG’s flagship paper, the Los Angeles Daily News.

From Kevin Roderick at LA Observed:

The note to the staff from Daily News editor Carolina Garcia doesn’t make clear if this is downsizing, but it’s being taken that way.

From: Carolina Garcia
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2011 10:29 AM
Subject: Sharyn and Natalie

Colleagues,

I’m saddened to report that we are losing two long-time dedicated journalists, Features Editor Sharyn Betz and Food Editor Natalie Haughton. Through the decades they have done an outstanding job. They’re pros in every way and we thank them for their hard work and contributions to the Daily News. We will miss them. Sharyn’s last day is Friday and Natalie leaves today.

Roderick followed up with another post Friday on changes at the top at LANG:

Carolina Garcia, the editor of the Daily News, will now be the executive editor for the Daily Breeze and the Press-Telegram in Long Beach as well. Breeze editor Toni Sciacqua becomes managing editor – digital for the group. Sue Schmitt, the editor & general manager of the Press-Telegram, has “decided not to remain as a full-time employee of the company as part of this transition.” It’s the next, big shoe to fall after yesterday’s axing of the DN’s features and food editors. In Northern California, the MediaNews papers have been largely merged into one product — and many expect this is the first step toward that occurring here.

Read the rest.

Layoffs marching through Georgia

Here’s the bad news for folks who work at the major player in Southwestern Georgia journalism, from Jade Bulecza of WALB television in Albany, Georgia:

Dozens of south Georgia newspaper workers are laid off.

We’re told the company that owns papers in Valdosta, Tifton, Cordele, Americus and Thomasville is cutting its workforce by 20-percent.

It’s another sign of the tough economy and the struggling newspaper industry.

The Valdosta Daily Times is dealing with lay offs. One of VSU’s graduate students was affected.

“We had a student that was placed with the Valdosta Daily Times and we received a call from her yesterday stating she had been laid off,” said Carla Carter Jordan. “She was a co-op student which was a paid opportunity.”

We’re told there was a total of 16 layoffs. The Daily Times isn’t the only newspaper. Sources tell us the parent company Community Newspaper Holdings Incorporated is making 20 percent cuts across the board.

That would also include the Thomasville Times Enterprise, the Tifton Gazette, the Cordele Dispatch, and the Americus Times Recorder.

Read the rest.

And the Village loses more of its Voice

The Village Voice was America’s first well-known alternative newspaper of the Eisenhower years, founded by a group of iconoclasts that included author Norman Mailer.

Since then, the paper has been bought up by a succession of chains, losing its once Bohemian edginess, and of late caught up in the usual wave of downsizings designed to boost sagging corporate bottom lines,

The latest from Hamilton Nolan at Gawker:

We hear that Ward Harkavy, one of the top editors at The Village Voice, has been laid off for financial reasons. Also laid off: Harry Siegel, the columnist hired just months ago to replace the last legendary names forced out at the Voice. The tough times in alt-weekly land continue. Voice editor Tony Ortega hasn’t responded to requests for comment.

And more bad news for Murdoch’s minions

Already forced to close its most popular British rag over that notorious phone hacking scandal, Rupert Murdoch’s news corps is handing out pink slips at its more respectable papers in Old Blighty.

And that’s lots of pink slips, as Reuters reports:

Editorial staff at Rupert Murdoch’s remaining upscale London newspapers were informed on Thursday of impending budget and staff cuts, which may include some compulsory layoffs.

A company source said that the principal objective of the move was to make a 12-per-cent across-the-board cut in budgets at both the weekly Sunday Times and the Monday-through-Saturday daily Times of London.

John Witherow, editor of The Sunday Times, and James Harding, editor of The Times, both announced the cuts to their staff at meetings

A video treat: Sounds of a vanished technology

The History of the Typewriter recited by Michael Winslow [20:51]

A brilliant conceptual film from Spanish artist Ignacio Uriarte incorporates pioneer beat-boxer Michael Winslow, best known to American film-goers from his performances in the Police Academy films, performing the sounds of a now-vanished technology, the typewriter.

The film was recorded in the Berlin recording studio Andere Baustelle.

Lest you think he’s simply making arbitrary noises, consider the following from an article in Frieze Magazine by Barcelona writer Nogueras Blanchard:

Winslow performs with precision and concentration, as if executing a particularly torturous piece of chamber music punctuated by moments of impish irreverence. His performance conjures images of a secretary trotting out a dictated letter on 1932’s cutting-edge technology (the inappropriately named Remington Noiseless Portable), or a hack bashing out copy on his newsroom Triumph. (In fact, Uriarte recorded Winslow’s imitations of vintage machines from collections in Germany and Switzerland as they were being used to type out the title of the film.) The techniques Winslow uses to achieve the ‘lost’ noises are fascinating to observe: by grasping the two microphones like twin pan pipes, gnawing them like corncobs, or grappling, swiping and variously pushing them against his teeth and lips, he produces a glorious vocabulary of fricative letter-hammering, space-bar thuds, platen-knob twisting and carriage-return shunts that seems to encompass chicken-pecking, machete-slashing, strangulation, tap-dancing and QWERTY beat-boxing.

Read the rest.

Having written on two of the machines featured in Winslow’s performance, we can attest to their accuracy.

The film rendered us misty with nostalgia for a technology that once played a central role in our journalist career. We began with a machine not featured in the video, our own personal Remington Quiet-Riter 11 [exactly like this one, right down to the color] since our first employer, the now-vanished Winslow [Arizona] Mail lacked a spare machine, then switched to an ancient Underwood, the standbys of many a newsroom, when we moved on to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Our last typewriters were IBMs, the Selectric at Psychology Today magazine, and the Executive during a temporary job in Los Angeles, before moving on to an early newsroom computer at the late, great Santa Monica Evening Outlook.

So cheers to Winslow and Uriarte for invoking fond memories of days of yore, and for a remarkable piece of work.

H/T to Metafilter.

Blood on the newsroom floor: Yet more layoffs

Two more rounds of layoffs to report, one in Maine and the other in Florida.

Feeling the pain in Portland

A chain that owns several of Portland’s newspapers announced more layoffs Friday, as the Associated Press reports:

The CEO of MaineToday Media says 38 workers at The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram are being laid off in two weeks and another 23 workers have agreed to voluntary buyouts.

In a statement, Richard Connor blames a decline in advertising revenue for the cuts, the bulk of which are coming from the news department. Workers were notified Thursday.

Before the cuts, The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram had 270 workers.

The cuts include full- and part-time workers. Connor says full-time employees who are being laid off will receive two weeks of severance pay for every year of employment.

More from the Hazleton, Pennsylvania, Standard Speaker:

MaineToday Media also operates the Kennebec Journal in Augusta and Morning Sentinel in Waterville. Three employees with those newspapers took voluntary buyouts, but there were no layoffs.

The problem in Palm Beach

While folks think of Palm Beach as one of the country’s tonier places to live, that’s not the case for folks at the Palm Beach Post.

From Jose Lambiet of GossipExtra:

The Palm Beach Post, privately held by an Atlanta family with three members on the Forbes 400 richest Americans, is laying off “more than 20“ employees [Friday], according to a memo exclusively obtained by Gossip Extra.

In an email sent an hour ago to the entire company in West Palm Beach, Publisher Tim Burke made it clear more layoffs could come soon as the newspaper’s umbrella company, Cox Newspapers, continues to contract during the economic downturn.

Today’s unexpected cuts from a staff that’s already stretched thin include four newsroom workers, including two who work mainly for the newspaper’s website, pbpost.com.

And that’s the good news for today.

Blood on the newsroom floor: Layoffs, hints

UPDATED: At the end

Today, we go from Texas to England in pursuit of the latest bad news for the Fourth Estate.

We begin with the agony in Austin

From the Austin Post:

The Austin American-Statesman experienced another round of layoffs today. Some 53 newspaper employees got pink slips when they arrived at work.

“We did restructure a few departments today but there were no newsroom changes in order to continue providing the same level of commitment to content for our readers,” said Jane Williams, American-Statesman publisher.

There was reportedly weeping in the newspaper’s parking lot as the former employees left the building. This is third round of layoffs at Austin’s daily newspaper this year alone.  Last June, a dozen top-notch staffers left the newsroom, taking with them years of experience, goodwill, talent, and knowledge of Austin and its history.  Another 21 one workers took the voluntary separation and early retirement packages also.  Former editor Fred Zipp was another significant loss for the newspaper this year.  After the second round, Zipp commented in an editorial:  “We lost a heartbreaking amount of passion, intelligence and experience.”

Read the rest.

And more layoffs may be coming at Gannett

Gannett, the chain that owns the lagrest single block of newspaper circulation in the United States, has already undergone one major round of layoffs this year, and the company’s new CEO isn’t ruling out another one.

From Gannett blog:

In an interview this afternoon with The New York Times on her elevation to CEO, Gracia Martore would not comment on whether Gannett would be forced to lay off more workers in the near future, adding that it was still “a little too early to handicap where the economy will be for 2012.”

In June, GCI laid off 700 U.S. newspaper employees. In a memo at the time, division President Bob Dickey said: “We will do all that we can to avoid further layoffs outside of those related to ongoing consolidations.”

And now for a dose of Schadenfreude

While we’re nine to fond of Rupert Murdoch’s monstrous [in both senses] media empire, we do feel for these British journalists who are victims of the Murdoch way of doing business.

Dominic Ponsford of the Portsmouth, England, PressGazette:

News International appears to have effectively sacked around 100 former News of the World staff – those who did not take voluntary redundancy and who have not found other jobs in the company.

When the News of the World closure was announced three months ago – parent company News Corp said that the “vast majority” of the paper’s staff would be found jobs elsewhere in the company. They were placed on three months gardening leave while other employment options were explored, and they were also offered enhanced redundancy terms under a voluntary “early leaver” scheme which was generous by industry standards.

According to News International, the News of the World had 250 staff – comprising salaried employees and full-time casuals.

Chief executive Tom Mockridge said in a statement yesterday that 81 staff chose to take voluntary redundancy under the enhanced “early leaver” option. And he said that 65 former NoW staff had been redeployed elsewhere in the company. The vast majority of the balance of the 250 now face compulsory redundancy.

Read the rest.

UPDATE: And another Murdoch job falls [tee-hee]

Once upon a time, Dow Jones was the most respected name in journalism. It’s flagship, The Wall Street Journal, boasted some of the best investigative stories done by American journalists.

Then Rupert Murdoch bought it, and it’s been downhill ever since.

But this latest news is a real blow to whatever attered dignity the company had left.

From Amy Chozick of the New York Times:

News Corp., already grappling with the fallout from a phone-hacking scandal in Britain, has suffered another blow to its operations in Europe. The top European executive at Dow Jones & Co., a unit of News Corp., resigned Tuesday after an internal inquiry revealed an agreement between The Wall Street Journal Europe’s circulation department and a Netherlands-based company that was featured in articles in the paper.

In an e-mail to his staff Andrew Langhoff, managing director of Dow Jones & Co.’s European, African and Middle East operations, and publisher of The Wall Street Journal Europe, said he would leave his post immediately. The announcement comes after revelations that two articles in The Wall Street Journal Europe’s Special Reports section were the result of a deal struck between the circulation department and consulting firm Executive Learning Partnership, or ELP.

“Because the agreement could leave the impression that news coverage can be influenced by commercial relationships, as publisher with executive oversight, I believe that my resignation is now the most honorable course,” Mr. Langhoff said. In a separate statement Dow Jones said the publisher “has the ultimate responsibility for this matter.”

Read the rest.

As for those wonderful, in-depth investigative pieces that were the heart of the Wall Street Journal? Say bye-bye.

Blood on the Newsroom Floor: More layoffs

Three new rounds of layoffs to report today in our ongoing coverage of downsizings at America’s newspapers. Two fo the cuts have already happened and one’s in the works.

The bad news for St. Peterburg

From Julie Moos at Romenesko:

When he announced a recent 5 percent pay cut for staff and change in severance payments, St. Petersburg Times chairman and CEO Paul Tash said the cost-cutting “will likely include further job reductions,” and now it has. In a memo to staff, editor Neil Brown acknowledged that layoffs at the Poynter-owned paper had started. “The economy affords us no guarantees,” Brown wrote, “but we hope to wrap up these staffing decisions by the middle of October.” We’ve been told about eight people who were laid off, but have confirmed only three.”

Read the rest.

And the doldrums hit Denver

Not exactly unexpected, since major layoffs are scheduled for all the MediaNews papers, including those in the Bay Area, which will be announced early next month. With investment bankers calling shots, we’re not surprised.

The latest from the chain’s flagship paper, the Denver Post:

The Denver Post is offering buyouts in an effort to reduce staffing by up to 20 newsroom employees because of financial pressures.

Employees eligible for the voluntary buyouts are those age 55 or older, or those with 10 or more years of full-time continuous service.

The offer includes separation pay based on years of service and continuation of health insurance.

If 20 workers accept the buyout offers, it would reduce The Post’s newsroom staffing by about 8 percent.

Post editor Greg Moore said layoffs may occur if the targeted number of buyouts are not reached.

Read the rest.

Milwaukee reporters crying in their beer?

From Erik Gunn of Milwaukee Magazine:

Details are now clear on the newest round of Journal Sentinel downsizing. The number of people cut was smaller than past ones, especially in the newsroom, which lost six people. That’s small comfort, though, to a staff whose ranks are half what they were at the time the paper was created 16 years ago with the merger of the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel.

In the end, four took buyouts and one staffer was laid off involuntarily. Reporters Tom Held, Doris Hajewski, and Amy Hetzner accepted buyouts along with Bob Helbig, an editor in the business section.

>snip<

In a statement to union members, Tom Silverstein, president of the newsroom union, Newspaper Guild Local 51, sharply noted the tendency to cut at the bottom instead of the top. “I’m hoping we can keep our current numbers stable, but as we’ve seen, the company is willing to squeeze the newsroom any time it feels like its financial numbers aren’t up to snuff,” he said. “I remain dismayed that, with few exceptions, the newsroom cuts have been aimed at bargaining-unit employees and not management.”

There were also two positions cut at JS Online, which isn’t covered by the Guild.

Read the rest.

And so it continues. . .

Blood on the Newsroom Floor: UnPatched, More

Two San Francisco Bay Area online news editors have joined the unemployment line, plus a magazine dies in New Mexico.

First, the layoffs by the Bay, from Business Insider:

If you believe Patch president Warren Webster, the local site conglomerate is going great, but we heard from one writer who was let go from the San Francisco/Bay Area Patch on [29 September].

The source writes:

I just got laid off from Patch today after a year with the company as a calendar editor. Just FYI.

Another calendar editor got laid off [27 September]. We’re in the SF Bay Area. They are going in a “different direction” with the calendars.

Robert Niles has an interesting post at Online Journalism Review that looks at Patch and similar ventures, which includes the following:

[Readers] tried to argue that Patch editors have job security that self-employed news publishers don’t enjoy. But working for someone else doesn’t equate to job security. From my perspective, it’s not working for someone else that provides the ultimate in job security.

An agreement from an employer to cut you a weekly check means nothing if that employer goes under. Or if it cuts you loose. Patch hardly looks like a stable employer at this stage, with reports of multi-million dollar losses and few signs of black ink anywhere in its network.

And from New Mexico, the news of the death of a popular magazine from Steve Terrell of Santa Fe’s New Mexican:

New Mexico Magazine, the nation’s oldest state magazine, is known for promoting the Land of Enchantment’s dramatic skies. On Tuesday, dark clouds rained over the magazine’s Santa Fe offices, as seven of its 17 staff members learned they’re out of work.

Stunned, somber editors and administrators, some of whom had worked for the tourism-oriented publication for decades, packed books and other belongings into boxes minutes after Tourism Department Secretary Monique Jacobson handed out layoff letters.

“This is a weird way to end my career,” a longtime editor whispered.

They were among 27 workers cut Tuesday by the State Personnel Board, which chopped 11 full-time positions at the state Tourism Department, which oversees the glossy publication, website and assorted enterprises, and 16 full-time jobs at Expo New Mexico, which puts on the State Fair and manages the fairgrounds in Albuquerque.

This year’s job cuts are the first for state workers with civil service protections since the economy nose-dived and lawmakers began cutting agency budgets three years ago to plug revenue shortfalls.

Blood on the Newsroom Floor: Layoffs slow?

Is the 2011 wave of newspaper layoffs slowing, at least for now.

During a recent ambit about the web, we were able to find only a few layoffs this week, albeit two were in California.

Village Voice chain downsizes

The Village Voice began as a fiercely independent counterculture paper in the Big Apple, the creation of Norman Mailer and two friends in 1955, and for years offered a unique brand of often-strident, always critical journalism.

The original owners sold out, and subsequent publishers have included a New York City Councilmember, a pet foods manufacturer, and two journalism legends, Clay Felker and Rupert Murdoch.

The paper lost the last of its countercultural luster six years ago when the New Times chain picked it up, and it’s publishers now reside in Phoenix, of all places.

Under New Times, the Voice has devolved largely into just another lifestyle rag, although it continues to offer some notable journalism [we’re fond of Tony Ortega’s ongoing coverage of Scientology].

The New Times chain, like most papers these days, has been having a hard time of it, and it’s just announced a round of layoffs, with some of the affected workers here in California.

From the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club blog:

The SFWeekly has laid off four staffers including reporter Matt Smith in what appears to be a budget-cutting move by parent company Village Voice Media, Eve Batey of the SFAppeal reports.

The layoffs come month after the rival Bay Guardian let go three of its editorial staffers, about a third of its staff.

The SFAppeal quoted one unnamed SFWeekly staffer as saying, “Apparently, it’s across the board in all Village Voice Media, but SF Weekly was hit the hardest because they lose a lot of money.”

The Appeal story said those who were laid off include Web editor Jake Swearingen, foodie bloger W. Blake Gray, Matt Smith and calendar editor and blogger Hiya Swanhuyser.

Earlier this year, the Guardian received an undisclosed sum from Village Voice Media to settle a lawsuit that alleged the chain sold ads in the SFWeekly at below the price of production in an attempt to run the Guardian out of business.

More on the chain’s layoffs from Dominic Holden of The Stranger:

Building on the news that layoffs hit the Seattle Weekly newsroom yesterday, parent company Village Voice Media executive associate editor Andy Van De Voorde confirms today that the company has laid off a total of 19 people from its outlets around the United States. “It’s painful to lose really good people,” he says.

So far there are confirmations of layoffs at SF Weekly, City Pages, and Seattle Weekly.

“In all, we lost 19 journalists yesterday,” Van De Voorde continues. “Some of these were staff writers. Some were web editors. Some were specialists such as arts bloggers, who had been added to staffs more recently but who we unfortunately weren’t able to retain. This is not a reflection on them, it’s a reflection on the economy, which, as Mike Seely has already noted in his comment to you, continues to be brutal, and continues to affect publications and other businesses all around the country.” He didn’t comment on how many news outlets were affected, only saying, “At a number of papers, one person was laid off; at others, such as Seattle Weekly, it was more.”

And LA Observed reports that the layoffs included at least one writer at OC Weekly, published in Southern California’s Orange County.

And San Diego County layoffs

And another round of California layoffs was announced at the North County Times, a newspaper that swallowed up [among others] one of ensl’s old employers, the late Oceanside Blade-Tribune. Paper Cuts reports that at least journalists lost their jobs, and one, Jeff Frank, offers his farewell column here.

Real blood on the newsroom floor in Mexico

While we are concerned with the ongoing destruction of journalism in the United States, and have adopted a metaphorical headline to describe the plight of our fellow journalists, the troubles we face face in comparison to those confronting our colleagues in Mexico.

From Reporters Without Borders:

Woman newspaper editor beheaded in Nuevo Laredo, young reporter missing in Veracruz

Published on Monday 26 September 2011.

The decapitated body of María Elizabeth Macías, the editor of Primera Hora, a daily based in Nuevo Laredo (in the eastern state of Tamaulipas), was found on 24 September. Aged 39, she was the fourth woman journalist to be murdered in Mexico since the start of the year.

The previous three women victims were former Televisa reporter Rocio González Trápaga and Ana María Marcela Yarce Viveros, the editor of the weekly magazine Contralínea, who were killed together in the capital on 31 August, and columnist Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz of the regional daily Notiver, who was slain in the eastern state of Veracruz on 26 July.

“The grim landmark of 80 journalists killed in the past decade has just been reached, with the murders getting steadily more horrific as the years pass,” Reporters Without Borders said. “There seems to be no way out of this horror. The country is immersed in an all-out war and just writing the word ‘narcos’ or ‘trafficking’ can cost you your life. What will be left of freedom of information while the barbarity continues?

“This collapse of a nation will not be resolved by the next elections. The international community must insist that the Mexican authorities give a regular accounting of the fight against impunity and the US federal government must impost drastic arms controls, without which the tragedy in Mexico will inevitably continue.”

According to various sources, Macías used online social networks to report about organized crime activities in her region and blogged under the pseudonym of “La Nena de Nuevo Laredo.” The Tamaulipas state attorney-general’s office said two computer keys, a music player, several cables and the following message were found near her body:

“Ok Nuevo Laredo live on the social networks, I am La Nena de Laredo and I am here because of my reports and yours … for those who don’t want to believe it, this has happened to me because of my actions, because I trusted SEDENA and MARINA… Thank you for your attention. Att: La Nena de Laredo… zzz”

This type of warning was already used against social networks users who dare to talk about drug trafficking. Two bodies bearing the marks of torture were hung from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo on 13 September with messages to the contributors to the “Al rojo vivo” and “Blog del Narco” websites.

Disappearance and exile

Manuel Gabriel Fonseca Hernández, a journalist who covers crime for El Mañanero de Acayucan, a newspaper in the south of Veracruz state, and who also writes for El Diario de Acayucan, Tribuna del Sur and La Verdad, has meanwhile been missing since 19 September. His family says that, on day he disappeared, he went out to conduct interviews for a story he was doing for his main newspaper.

A new epicentre of terror since the start of 2011, Veracruz has just had another week of violence and intimidation of journalists. The discovery of bodies often leads to threats against the journalists covering the story. Three journalists – Jorge Flores of W Radio, Juan Carlos Alarcón of MVS Noticias and Arturo Moreno of the news agency Notimex – were detained at gunpoint by members of the Veracruz Investigative Agency (AVI) outside the Boca del Río forensic department’s headquarters and were forced to delete the photos they had taken. The state government was unable to explain this abuse of authority.

Rafael Pineda, a well-known cartoonist known as Rapé, meanwhile reported on Twitter on 22 September that he was leaving Veracruz state for safety reasons. Around 15 other journalists have fled to other states or fled the country in the past two months. Pineda draws cartoons for the magazines El Chamucho and Zócalo, the newspaper Milenio and the “¡Basta de Sangre!” – “No + sangre” campaign.

An estimated 50,000 people have been killed in the federal offensive against drug trafficking that was launched in December 2006. It has become virtually impossible to work as a journalist but the federal authorities continue to delay implementation of an agreement for protecting journalists that was signed a year ago.