Freedom/OCR employees have been warned

Is Digital First staffing the pro sports teams in LA with reporters from both OCR and the LANG papers?

 

Haven't had a chance to check the other beats, but it looks like last night's Dodger game in Atlanta was only staffed by the LANG reporter, JP Hoornstra. Not sure what that means for OCR's Bill Plunkett, who does a great job (including more consistently great leads than just about any beat writer I know) ... but I'm not thinking it's good.

 

No decisions have been made on this. It seems Hoornstra had purchased his airline tickets before Plunkett did, so they let him do this trip. That is all at this time. Agree on Plunkett's ledes.

 

I am just checking in on this. Are the OCR and the LANG group operating separate editorial staffs or has a merger occurred? Are people losing jobs?

 

Seems pretty merged to me. Bylines all over the place.

 

How many people have lost jobs?

 

Seems to me, at least on the sports side, losses have been minimal or none at all. I expected big cuts, too, with all the apparent redundancies covering the pro and college beats, but that hasn't been the case.

 

In sports it looks like cuts have been minimal, one here, one there. One person left and was replaced. It also appears that all the papers are being produced as they had been, but all of them have access to all of the material.

 

Many years ago when I worked at the Sun/IVDB, we had pro and college copy from the LADN writers, plus local prep copy and our own auto racing copy. I produced the fronts and jumps for each paper each night, which sucked because at that time the IVDB always had a 1-inch strip ad along the bottom. And because the Sun would have four or more pages than the IVDB, figuring out the jumps and getting in everything that needed to run sucked.

I wasn't surprised the Sun moved into new offices because the downtown office had rats -- big ones -- bats and homeless dudes pissing on the street. But I wonder if that building is even part of LANG anymore.

I liked many of the people with whom I worked, but I don't miss the Inland Empire at all.