Tribune buyouts announced today

How offensive. Whenever buyouts are offered ... it's such an embarrassment. It's a company saying through its actions it cares not about any specific writer/journalist. If somebody's been there 8 years and is making a buck, they want them gone. Many businesses want good people. Not newspaper companies.

 

Seems like this might be of interest:

Tribune Publishing Says Terry Jimenez Assumed Role Of President And CEO

 

At least two sports writers taking buyouts in Hampton Roads: Ed Miller at the Virginian-Pilot and Dave Johnson at the Daily Press.
More reporters, editors leave The Virginian-Pilot, Daily Press in latest buyouts offered by Tribune

 

That would leave, if I'm told correctly, an SE, an ASE, a columnist in David Teel and 5 sportswriters.

 

Are the papers managed as a joint newsroom or still run seperately?

 

Joint newsroom. It's all one big combined family now.

 

At the Daily Press/Virginian-Pilot, add sports columnist David Teel to the list of those taking the buyout. He was there 36 years, enshrined in a couple of halls of fame and winner of countless awards.

His farewell column .... which may be behind a paywall ....

 

This isn't just a journalism issue, sadly. I've always given notice, but that's not required. And I've been laid off and let go, with notice and without, sometimes with a buyout and sometimes without. That's how it works.

I got a great piece of advice from someone a long time ago who said, "You may love the business, but the business will never love you back. Working is strictly a financial arrangement: You do a certain amount of production and the company is supposed to pay you whatever amount you've agreed upon, or the check bounces.

"If you think the company isn't holding up its end of the bargain, you can quit and find something else to do. You owe the company no notice and no explanations. If the company doesn't need you, its only obligation is whatever terms you agreed to when you were hired. They owe you nothing more than that.

"If you attach an emotional investment to the job, you're always going to find yourself disappointed in the eventual outcome."

Given the state of the industry, if you pass on the buyouts, you're gambling that the xx months you'll stay employed during that time will outweigh the buyout money. But with all due respect to the people in Orlando (and any job), your sense of community responsibility means squat in bottom-line decision making. If management thinks your employment is beneficial, you'll stay. If not, you'll be replaced or eliminated.

Nobody is irreplaceable. Somebody replaced Grantland Rice, Shirley Povich, Furman Bisher and Jim Murray. Somebody's working at all the radio stations, newspapers and online outlets where I used to be employed.

It's a lousy way to run a newspaper. Or a hospital. Or a bank. But that's the cold, harsh reality of economics in the 21st century.

 

Teel is a legend, and he's as nice of a guy as you'll ever meet. Helpful to those at smaller newspapers learning their way. Won't big-time a soul. I'm going to miss reading his excellent takes on the ACC. No one was better.

 

Hard to read of some departures today. Just hard. So much institutional knowledge out the door.

 

A publisher once told me institutional knowledge was overrated.

Then he got laid off.

 

True. Of course the suits don't care.