DFM bloodletting continues

Wish someone could get the right number for the Merc newsroom. I'm sure it's depressingly low, but I've seen a lot of sites imprecisely note that the 39 represents the number of Guild-represented staff.

 

Tom Hoffarth. We were co-workers at the Daily Breeze for a long time, played on the company softball team together. He has been doing the sports media column forever and it is really good. He took the column to the L.A. Daily News when he got hired by that paper. He has been right on top of all the news regarding Vin Scully, Bob Miller, Dick Enberg, Keith Jackson, etc.
He patterned himself after the guy who originated the concept, Jack Craig of the Boston Globe. He once told me the he was all set to replace Craig. He interviewed and was told he was going to be hired. He even started packing boxes to move to Boston. Then someone already on staff decided they wanted to do it and Hoffarth did not get hired.
He has immense knowledge of SoCal and the newspaper group is poorer for his departure.

 

Absolutely agree this is a huge loss — not just for the group but for readers. Never read much LADN stuff, but he was always worth the time.
LA Observed says 10 people were cut in sports. Hardly seems like there are 10 left to cut.

 

How many daily papers have a general television columnists. much less a specialized sports media columnist?

 

In addition to Hoffarth and the photogs at the Daily Breeze, the only other one I've heard of so far is the sports editor of the Irvine World News, who has had that position for more than 30 years. In fact, friends refer to him as The Mayor of Irvine because of his local knowledge and longevity. The Irvine World News used to be a daily, then a few days, then a weekly that was bought by OCR many years ago.

 

He just tweeted about the announcement.

 

What did he say?? I don’t have Twitter. My daughter went to high school in Irvine and you always knew he would be there covering the games.

 

Tim is s terrific guy who knows exactly what community journalism is supposed to be.

 

MTM covered this in the next post. "The Mayor" received a ton of support in the reply tweets. I don't know him, but having gotten that news myself 10 years ago, I just hope he powers forward.

 

Also laid off, according to his Facebook page, is Landon Negri, who covered preps for Riverside and had been a prep writer in that area for 22 years. At least one other prep writer has been laid off, but since I'm not sure that person has made any public comment yet, I will refrain from passing along the name.