“There’s bad blood in the city room” says a veteran Plain Dealer reporter as the PD editorial staff awaits more employee cutbacks.
No wonder, the ranks soon will be much thinner. Many are looking over their shoulders, not knowing which will soon not be employed by the newspaper.
The axe, unfortunately, is about the fall again. This time 50 editorial staffers will be dropped. More than half, I’m told, already have signed up to leave. However, they have a week to change their minds.
In any case, the PD will drop 50 editorial employees total, it is said.
Among those leaving or having left: Sam Fulwood, Scott and Chris Stephens, Alana Baranick, Wally Guenther, Karen Sandstrom, Molly Kavanaugh, Joel Rutchick, John Campanelli, Fran Henry, Mary Vanac and Chris Seper.
Staffers are upset also about losing pension time. The PD, owned by the Newhouse family, has suspended pension credits for a year. One staffer said this has been the third time in recent years. A suspension of a year means that if you’ve been at the PD eight years, you have seven years credit under the pension.
They are also upset that while management gets health benefits after leaving, those cut now will not receive those benefits.
Soon we won’t have a daily newspaper, certainly as we have known it.
We complain about its deficiencies but it is the main source of community information is the Plain Dealer. It’s been that way since 1982 when the PD helped sack the Cleveland Press, an afternoon paper.
The decline has been swift, as it has at many newspapers around the nation.
“They (management) never saw the end coming,” as one staffer put it, pointing out that the PD in recent years built a $200-million new printing plant in Brookpark and new editorial offices downtown on Superior Avenue in Cleveland.
Publisher Terry Egger and Editor Susan Goldberg, old hands now at chop chop, will be making the decision. Some expect it possibly Monday, Dec. 1.
The “bad blood” can be attributed to the selectivity available to Egger, who came here from St. Louis, and Goldberg, who came here from San Jose. No one knows if their name is on the list to go.
Both Egger and Goldberg are short-timers here and both have had the necessary experience of cutbacks at other newspapers – Egger at the St. Louis Dispatch and Goldberg at the San Jose Mercury News.
Despite the long-standing representation of the Newspaper Guild, cuts don’t have to follow the traditional seniority rule. I’m told that there are several other factors that management can utilize for letting someone go before seniority. Therefore, long-time reporters could be among those dismissed.
The Cleveland union is known as Guild Chapter #1, chartered in 1934. In 1995 the Guild became affiliated with the Communications Workers.
In October, Egger said he expected a staff reduction this year of 38. That subsequently was increased to 50.
These reductions followed an earlier decline of 17 percent in the editorial staff.
Egger, as I’ve written before, “comes across as an amiable guy and plays that role well” but he turns out to be a “hatchet man for Newhouse, as I expected when he was brought here from St. Louis.
The loss is a community loss in addition to personal losses of reporters and editors.
Links:
[1] http://smtp.realneo.us/content/pd-moves-rent-space-parking-superior-offices
[2] http://smtp.realneo.us/content/roldo-bartimole-0
[3] http://smtp.realneo.us/content/pd-slices-deeper-editorial-work-staff