Plain Dealer guts union

[TheSportsPredictor]

Reporters are next.
Plain Dealer Busts Union, Moves Forward With Plan to Cut 29 Local Journalism Jobs

 

[Fredrick]

Very sad. Very.

 

[Sam Mills 51]

Disgusting. And not at all surprising.

 

[HanSenSE]

I could so get laid off by the Plain Dealer ...

 

[LanceyHoward]

When I read the link the article stated that when the 29 personnel in design are sacked that will eliminate almost half the unionized positions. So how many reporters does that leave at the Plain-Dealer?

And on a pessimistic note. Gatehouse bought Akron earlier this year for 16 million dollars. Newhouse, which could afford the Beacon Journal, passed. Newhouse could have gotten much of the purchase price back just from consolidating real estate. And also consolidated staffs which would have saved a lot of money.

Which is another way of saying the newspaper business is going to hell.

 

[Fran Curci]

Gatehouse has been a surprisingly aggressive bidder in some cases.

 

[Bronco77]

Gatehouse has been a surprisingly aggressive bidder in some cases.

Word is that GateHouse is sniffing around the Dayton paper and the two smaller papers Cox owns in that area. And people I know who recently left Cox believe the AJC is on the block, too, though not necessarily to GateHouse.

 

[WriteThinking]

Not knowing that the Plain Dealer had a union, when I first saw the thread head, I read it as "Plain Dealer Gets a Union."

I thought, "Hm, maybe that's good." Which was a switch for me, because, generally speaking, I don't support unions.

 

[Fran Curci]

Word is that GateHouse is sniffing around the Dayton paper and the two smaller papers Cox owns in that area. And people I know who recently left Cox believe the AJC is on the block, too, though not necessarily to GateHouse.

Cox President Kim Guthrie has said the company is looking to sell 14 TV stations -- not sure if that represents all of Cox's TV stations -- because of a lack of scale. If they're worried about scale, they have to sell Dayton and AJC, the last two papers.

 

[cake in the rain]

When I read the link the article stated that when the 29 personnel in design are sacked that will eliminate almost half the unionized positions. So how many reporters does that leave at the Plain-Dealer?

It's a bit confusing, since only a handful of the reporters in Cleveland are employees of the Plain Dealer (unionized). The rest are non-unionized employees of Cleveland.com (Ohio Media Group or something like that?). Virtually every current sports reporter is *not* officially a Plain Dealer employee, including veterans who wisely left the union to join what they knew would ultimately be the winning side.

 

[LanceyHoward]

Cox President Kim Guthrie has said the company is looking to sell 14 TV stations -- not sure if that represents all of Cox's TV stations -- because of a lack of scale. If they're worried about scale, they have to sell Dayton and AJC, the last two papers.

14 is all the television stations. My guess is that all the stations except the ones in Dayton and Atlanta are for sale which are the legacy markets. And maybe Dayton and Atlanta are for sale also.

If the AJC is for sale I wonder if Bezos, Murdoch or the Ne York Times tries to buy it. Those three companies are fighting it out for the national online subscription market. Buying the biggest paper in the Southeast would give one of those companies the same a competitive advantage over a large geographic area.

 

[sporty]

This is what you get when you gut your copy editors. This is no knock against Cabot, either. She should be backed up better than this.

See Gregg Williams’ goodbye message to Browns fans: ‘It has been an honor to coach this team’

 

[ChrisLong]

This is what you get when you gut your copy editors. This is no knock against Cabot, either. She should be backed up better than this.

See Gregg Williams’ goodbye message to Browns fans: ‘It has been an honor to coach this team’

Cabot deserves to be criticized. Anybody in this business should be able to write the first sentence of a story without a critical mistake or omission. And she knows there are no copyeditors.

 

[sporty]

ChrisLong there you go letting logic get in the way of a good argument. You are right about her catching that in her lede, but damn it would be nice to have some backup to cover your butt.

 

[cake in the rain]

This is what you get when you gut your copy editors. This is no knock against Cabot, either. She should be backed up better than this.

See Gregg Williams’ goodbye message to Browns fans: ‘It has been an honor to coach this team’

There have been no "copy editors" in any real sense at Cleveland.com for several years.

The people whose jobs were recently eliminated were working on the print edition.

 

[Fredrick]

Fredrick hates suits. Fredrick loves copy editors. News organizations are really blowing it (again) by dumping so many copy editors. Nobody is perfect and with many writers/editors working 70 or more hours a week just to keep their jobs ... mistakes can and will happen. This is another sign of unqualified people running news organizations. These people are investor types. They know nothing about writing, reporting or copy editing or layout. Obviously the suits who have no background in journalism think copy editors do nothing but steal money. They are wrong. Funny to witness newspapers becoming the way of dinosaurs and rotary phones.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Reporters get theirs:

Plain Dealer Editor Announces 12 Reporters and Editors Will Lose Jobs, Decimating Print Newsroom

 

[LanceyHoward]

Reporters get theirs:

Plain Dealer Editor Announces 12 Reporters and Editors Will Lose Jobs, Decimating Print Newsroom

The Guild is down to about 30 people. Are there other reporters not covered by the Guild. How many will be left in sports, or is that still unknown?

Gatehouse paid 16 million last year for Akron. I still don't see how Newhouse could have passed that up given the opportunity to consolidate the two largest papers in the region.

 

[cake in the rain]

The Guild is down to about 30 people. Are there other reporters not covered by the Guild. How many will be left in sports, or is that still unknown?

Gatehouse paid 16 million last year for Akron. I still don't see how Newhouse could have passed that up given the opportunity to consolidate the two largest papers in the region.

No one who works at Cleveland.com is in the union. The Guild only covers the dwindling number of people employed by the Plain Dealer. (It's a subtle distinction, but you can see in the byline who their "official" employer is). I'm not aware of a single prominent sports reporter who is under the umbrella of the Plain Dealer, although I'm sure there must be at least one or two left. Maybe Terry Pluto?