Riverside?

[Moderator1]

Anybody know anything? Post or PM me if you do. I'm hearing **** I don't like.

 

[Moderator1]

Damn. That's quite a list.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

All right ... **** all, I'm tired of this ****.

Everybody call in sick tomorrow. Everybody. Reporters. Copy editors. Graphics people. Rim people. Slot people. Photo techs. Press room people.

Everybody.

See how the suits can cope with nobody to put out the part of the paper people actually read.

 

[Moderator1]

Cripes. I've been hoping I'd been hearing wrong. Unfortunately, it wasn't. This is a staff that once numbered above 40 and is now near 20. They did some great things. Not great things for their size. Great things.

Anyway, a brief detail of the carnage:

Six more in sports out in this one. No more UCLA or USC beats there, both writers gone. Dodgers writer, too. Preps editor also gone along with a couple on the desk.

 

[Angola!]

40 in sports or the newsroom?

 

[Moderator1]

Sports.
Paper's about the size of Richmond (or was). We had 29 at the highest when I was SE (and used to be bigger).
Newsroom in Richmond had 178 slots when I left, though it wasn't full. WAY below that now.

 

[Fran Curci]

They probably plan to get their USC and Ucla coverage free in some kind of sharing arrangement, true?

 

[Riddick]

How do papers say they're aiming for more local coverage, but keep getting rid of their preps staff? I'm not saying the preps editor is the most important position at any shop, but preps is about as local as it gets.

 

[MileHigh]

This is just sick. SICK.

I grew up in this area. Lived there for 30 years. Read that paper a lot. Battled with them during my many years to the north in San Bernardino. And after MediaNews came into the I.E., there was a mass exodus to the P-E. During one month after MediaNews took over The Sun, there were 30 departures in the newsroom. Most to Riverside, which had just started its push across the county line.

I know lots of people in Riverside, and this is amazing. With the way LANG has handled the papers in the I.E., the P-E could have owned the entire market, from La Verne to Banning to Temecula.

As for content sharing, yeah, don't know who would do that. MediaNews already is sharing beat coverage with Orange County. The Times, as noted, probably won't be helping.

Nearly a year ago, PaulO wrote about the Sun-P-E newspaper war, and declared Riverside the winner.

http://www.oberjuerge.com/?p=136

This is a HUGE market. There are more than 3 million people east of Kellogg Hill. And seeing major cutbacks like this is sad and sickening.

 

[steveu]

I agree. Riverside was a pretty good kick-ass paper for people in the Inland Valley area. I thought it held its own with Los Angeles when I was out there a couple years ago. Now? I'd have to reserve judgment until I saw the paper, but I gotta believe the product's gonna look much worse.

 

[MTM]

I wonder if they will go to a fulltime stringer for USC, UCLA and Dodgers, like they do for hockey.
LA Times recently added a fulltime hockey stringer, as well.
Perhaps their Angels reporter will pick up Dodger home games, too.
They recently watered down the local news coverage, spreading out their zones to give local readers a lot of news from nearby communities they don't care about.
There's not going to be much reason to buy that paper pretty soon.

 

[Birdscribe]

As Moddy pointed out, this used to be one of the best papers for its size in the country. They covered the crap out of Riverside County, zoning seven editions from the desert to the city proper.

I know this, because I worked there as a glorified part-timer (36 hours a week) for nearly 5 years, covering everything under the sun there. It's the first paper I worked at and one of the two best papers I worked at.

Their staff was one of the best, most versatile and dynamic staffs you'll ever find. Their news side covered one of the largest counties in the country like you'd cover a small city. They did the profession proud across the board.

Like MileHigh, I grew up out there. And like Mile, I am sickened and appalled at the way the suits are writing off one of the major growth areas in the country.

To quote the Prophet Lewis Black... "Is anyone ****ING home?"

 

[SF_Express]

Happily, the guy I know best there is still there. Unhappily, he's not happy.

 

[devils_claw]

If anyone has info about the copy or design desks, I'd be grateful to hear it.

I agree with everything Birdscribe said, and not just because I worked there. It was a great paper filled with great people. This sucks.

 

[Moderator1]

Got this from a friend out that way about one of the people let go:

Diamond Leung was one of the six laid off from sports yesterday.
Here's a Dodger Thoughts entry about Diamond. It's got about 100 really thoughtful comments from readers. One was particularly astute: something along the lines of how his biggest fans never paid a dime to read him. That, it seems, was why he was laid off.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dodgerthoughts/2009/03/dodger-beat-wri.html

He's an awesome dude, fanatical about the web and blogging and had filled an online niche that few other pro beat writers had yet to grasp. I'd say without question he was the most tech savvy reporter on staff.

 

[MileHigh]

Got an e-mail from a former co-worker who made the cut. This time. And the P-E is now down to two prep writers. TWO. For like 100-plus schools.

Six total cuts, including two on the desk.

 

[MileHigh]

PaulO with his as-usual dead-on assessment.

http://www.oberjuerge.com/?p=667

 

[OTD]

PaulO with his as-usual dead-on assessment.

http://www.oberjuerge.com/?p=667

An excellent analysis of what's happened in a major market. People in LA might not have read the P-E sports coverage, but the fact that it was comprehensive as it was kept the LA writers on their toes. Everyone loses.

Good luck to all the former P-E staffers.

 

[Editude]

This retrenchment, which is what it is, literally ends a 25-year era. In the early '80s, the Press (city) and Enterprise (county) merged to form a mid-size morning paper. Staff grew over the years, as did the reach and depth. Heavy into zoning, with more and more big-time coverage (pro beats, Olympics) and the bulldozing into adjacent San Bernardino County. The product was well-received by the thousands of newcomers who poured into cheaphousingland well into the '90s. The economy's sudden turn in what became foreclosureland hurt, as did some low-hanging-fruit making decisions at home and in Dallas (CueCat?). Lots of good folks there, but they are in survival-at-best mode now, along with much of the area's population. Tough times all around.

 

[Piotr Rasputin]

I wonder if they will go to a fulltime stringer for USC, UCLA and Dodgers, like they do for hockey.

Riverside already has a pro soccer stringer, who has a column and is at Home Depot Center pretty much every other day working on stories. He does an excellent job, for what it's worth.

As with cuts, these things start with the smaller beats - soccer, hockey - and move up the chain.

And, my standard sad comment: Readers do not care.