Palm Beach Post

We're seeing this more and more as space shrinks and desk help is cut. Your preps writer covers the big game every game, and everything else is reduced to short stories by good stringers and 1-2-2 phoners by correspondents. Those .500 teams that were used to being covered every week? See you next year.

 

And those readers who didn't care that the team was .500 and wanted to read about it anyway, see you next year, too. Or never.

 

Believe me, some of these teams are so bad, the coaches are happy we don't staff their games. 2-3 inches is all it deserves, and all the pain they want to see in print.

 

More info on Cox layoffs in PB and Tribune layoffs in Orlando:

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/

 

Course, as I understand it, the paper can reject the offer to take the buyout and anyone who did put in for it can rescind the offer by sometime in August (the people I know made it sound sort of like declaring for a draft early). Still...that's going to be a damn ghost town. At what point is it even worth it to keep a print edition going when all you're giving readers is a few staff stories and a bunch of wire copy or listings? So many things won't get covered properly.

 

It has been said before here by, well, somebody: Be very careful about putting your name on, and then taking it off, a buyout list. That targets you as someone who is looking to leave or has thought about leaving, and that empowers a lot of bosses to dick with you (reassignments, shit duty) in the hope of getting you out without the severance check, after the buyout period is over.

 

That's true, but at this point in the industry, what people HAVEN'T thought about leaving? Even as clueless as some of the examples on this board have shown management to be, anyone with even a fraction of a working brain would have to think people have at least thought about leaving.
As far as the whole taking your name off a buyout list business, in a way, you're right. But management doesn't need a reason to dump on employees. The way they're doing the buyout process in a lot of places is a form of dumping on them, forcing employees to play a blind game of Texas Hold 'Em with their job on the table.
They're dumping on the people who are forced to take "involuntary separations" (we need George Carlin back so he can give us all another rant about horrendous soft language like that).
They're dumping on the people who stick around (shit duty, more duties in less time, no raises, maybe pay cuts, etc.), they're dumping on employees by not giving them straight answers on what their plan is to stop the spiral and they're dumping on the people who read their print or online products by giving their whole "we're going to do more with less" nonsense.
If the only reason in the decision whether to rescind a buyout offer is because management might do something down the line, that sounds like it's not worth keeping the job, because some way or another, the dumping will happen unless things change quickly and dramatically.
Which means I should probably get out of the business too, but it's the same internal wrestling match I've had for years: The head says get the hell out; the heart won't go.

 

More than 300 people applied for buyouts; all were accepted.

It still isn't enough.

<blockquote>The number of applications was more than expected. However, we received too many in some areas and not enough in others, So we still expect to begin a small number of involuntary separations, or layoffs, the week of Aug. 18 in some departments as needed.</blockquote>

Among those accepting buyouts:

-- Political Editor Brian Crowley
-- Reporter Tim O'Meilia
-- 'Listening Post" columnist and ombudsman C.B. Hanif
-- Accent columnist and society photog Thom Smith
-- 'Real Life' columnist Emily J. Minor
-- Assistant Metro Editor (and author) Douglas Kalajian
-- Deputy Director of Photography John J. Lopinot
-- Crime writer Rochelle Gilken
-- Editorial writer Elisa Cramer
-- Golf writer Craig Dolch
-- Assistant Managing Editor Bill Greer
-- Washington Bureau Chief Larry Lipman
-- Business writer Steve Pounds
-- Multimedia Editor Mary Kate Leming
-- Business (Real Estate) Columnist Linda Rawls
-- High school sports writer Steve Dorsey
-- Cartoonist and Creative Director Pat Crowley
-- West Palm Beach reporter Tom Collins
-- Reporter Kelly Wolfe
-- Reporter Antigone Barton
-- Food Editor Jan Norris
-- Riviera Beach reporter William Cooper, Jr.
-- Accent/Health reporter Carolyn Susman
-- Reporter Ron Hayes
-- Reporter Rachel Sauer
-- Movie/Theater Critic Hap Erstein
-- Art Critic Gary Schwan
-- Transportation reporter Chuck McGinness
-- Delray Bureau Chief Price Patton
-- Videographer Susan Miller
-- Photographer Chris Matula
-- Photographer Bob Shanley
-- St. Lucie County reporter Jim Reeder
-- Port St. Lucie Bureau Chief Teresa Lane
-- Martin County Bureau Chief Glenn Henderson
-- Martin County crime reporter Jill Taylor
-- Courts reporter Sarah Prohaska
-- Treasure Coast photo chief Paul Milette
-- Photographer David Spencer
-- Opinion writer Sally Swartz
-- Reporter Michelle Mundy

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2008/07/more_than_300_palm_beach.php

 

Everyone who applied for a buyout was accepted. That counts as good news these days (since it leaves no one's ass hanging out there as having asked to leave but being forced to stay).

But "only" 81 in the newsroom applied for the buyouts and management wants 130 out. That's still a boatload of layoffs. And, just for the record, how big was that newsroom staff to begin with? Hard to believe it's only a 25 percent reduction -- the newsroom began this process with 520 people?

 

Nope. About 300.

 

So the "25 percent reduction" announced at the beginning (and top of this thread) had to do with the overall company. But the newsroom is going to lose 43 percent? Holy crap!

 

I don't think that's true yet. I think they still have to decide whether some people will be allowed to go because those departments are short-handed, and I know for a fact some people applied but aren't on the list yet.

So I think that's still got to be decided by early August.