San Jose copy editor

Anyone familiar with that paper know if Will McCahil is still on staff?
Hope he didn't get the ax with the others who were cut.

 

Will's still here, thankfully. He's our ASE/Nights, in charge of the copy desk.

 

A few years ago, I was at a CSNE job fair and the Mercury-News was considered one of the gold standard papers there. The editor was the fellow with the goatee (if you worked there, you know who I mean) and people were approaching their table as if it was an altar or something. Now it sounds as if it's a mess there.

 

Yes, I knew him through Knight Ridder. He did a lot of hiring of sports writers and news and sports copy editors and, for a while, features writers. I remember him telling me about a hiring a former sports writer as a movie critic who did really well.

 

That's not all that uncommon at Guild papers. A long time ago a Guild paper hired me at the four-year level (top scale at six years) and kicked me to five years after a few months and then to top scale I think about six months after that. So my salary increased 30 percent, and when you consider what I was making at the previous job, my salary doubled within about nine months. (I was 25 and didn't know it wasn't always going to be like that.) They can always give you more, they just can't give you less.

 

And to think Tony Ridder said McClatchy would take good care of the Merc... good guy, that Tony.

 

The presence of a union has never prevented management from giving an employee more money.

 

Anyone heard anything? Are they still looking, or have they zeroed in on someone?