Plain Dealer Layoffs

This is heartbreaking.

Honestly I don’t know how the Plain Dealer/Cleveland.com split works. But I feel like this 32 does not include the cleveland.com folks

 

I believe Cleveland.com is separate -- a union-busting technique that seems to have worked. No idea how many they have; anyone here know?

 

It doesn't. The dotcom side is amateur hour, though, full of recent college grads, folks with little to no experience, all of whom work on the dirt cheap and I'm not certain whether they have any kind of benefits. Anyone who maintains a print subscription after today is a complete idiot.

Pretty sure they now have more sports columnists than reporters.

PS: The comments under the linked story just about say all you need to know about how fucked our country is.

 

32 in the Guild.

No one at Cleveland.com is in the Guild.

 

Paul Hoynes, Mary Kay Cabot come to mind as examples of people who make good money and have a lot of experience and who left the Guild to join Cleveland.com several years ago.

You're right about the print subscription, but you could say that about virtually any newspaper today.

 

Did they actually leave the guild? They both appear to be Plain Dealer Reporters. Anything in the PD gets shoveled to Cle.com, so it's tough to tell.

 

Man, that's a shame. A lot of seriously talented people let go. Good people beyond their profession, too.

 

If a reporter makes a lot of money and is over a certain age, the reporter is bought out or let go. If a suit makes a lot of money ... that's expected and welcomed. Why?

 

On the website, if the byline says "Cleveland.com" they're employed by the new company. If it says "Plain Dealer," they're employed by the old company.

 

I said this on another thread but the worst thing that union did was allow non-union workers to write for the newspaper. It use to be that PD could only use freelancers outside of a 50-mile radius, otherwise if you touched a computer and wrote anything for the newspaper from inside of the city limit you had to be a member of the guild. Giving that up allowed for Cleveland.com people to appear in the PD and therefore more those who remained with the newspaper layoffs in waiting. The guild should have walked and stayed out before allowing that to happen. Big mistake.