Terrible newspaper firings/layoffs

Mine was not nearly as vicious as some of those already posted.
Closed escrow on our house and were preparing to go to Maui for a family vacation the same week.
Got told of a "mandatory" staff meeting set for a Friday. I told my SE that I will be on vacation in Maui. He looked like he didn't know what to do. I asked if I should call in. He said yes. Then I said, screw it, I've earned my vacation, I'm not calling in.
I knew it was trouble when my credit card stopped working while I was in Maui.
This happened early in November. The only good thing about it was, we had 45 days to sign the forms to get the severance. Since I didn't get them until about Nov. 22 (after I returned from vacation), I could wait until after the first of the year to sign for the severance package and still be in the 45-day window. Thus, the bulk severance payment didn't add on to my salary for the year when I worked and instead went on the next year's, which started with me not having a job.

 

OK, this doesn't compare to the life-and-death situations on this thread, but ... a couple years back at one of the major national sports websites, they had one of their photo editors spend his weekend training a newly hired photo editor, then brought the first one in on Monday morning and told him, by the way, that was your replacement you just trained, hit the road.

 

After 25 years, over the phone at 8 a.m. on my birthday.

 

My place let me go just as I had a truckload of comp time coming and I had my cousin, who is an attorney call and negotiate on my behalf and I got an extra eight weeks or so of pay and a few extra months of health care.

It also got me blackballed by the company that owns 90 percent of the newspapers in my area, so there's that...

 

I'm at one of the Buffett papers ... no white horse yet. Can't really figure say that anything has changed other than the specter of furloughs and layoffs seems to be gone.

World Media did just break up the consolidated editing center that was housed within my shop. Everyone got an opportunity to retain their jobs, but some people would be forced to move to hold onto said jobs. We'll go from designing about 20 papers in house to two dailies and a few weeklies. On the one hand, it's good that they're going back to a model where the designers actually live in the damn city where the paper is printed. On the other hand, some people will have their lives uprooted and probably wouldn't have ever taken their jobs if they had to live in those cities.

 

i forgot about the screwing you took when i started this thread. yours was a monumental top-10er.
sorry to dredge that shit up.

 

Similar thing happened to me. I got two e-mails from former coworkers asking where my new job was, because they saw an opening posted on jjobs.com, knew we were fully staffed and also knew I was sick of the place and wanted to jet. After telling these people I hasn't gotten a new job, I asked the ME WTF. I got some mealy-mouthed reply about how "We just want to have a folder of resumes to look through should we have an opening." Three weeks later, they had their fucking opening.

 

When I got laid off, my boss didn't the stones to tell me I had been downsized. He told me I had to come in for "an important meeting." Finally, the ME called back & told me my fate.

At one of my shops, an award-winner was cut loose a week before his wedding. On the way out, our SE didn't say beans except nervous small talk. Maybe he didnt know what to say, but still, anything is better than nothing.

 

The mass layoffs/You can interview for your old job! BS at Singleton's SoCal acquisitions in the late 1990s set a standard for overall screw jobs that has since been emulated at more than one shop.

Called people in one at a time, shoved a paper in their face detailing the pay and benefits cuts, told the employees "take it or leave it." Many took it, and the next escape hatch from those places.

 

There's never a good time to be laid off, but there certainly are bad times -- and right before Christmas seems to be one of those times, especially for papers whose beancounters use the calendar year for their fiscal year.

I've known/worked with several people who were axed within a few days of Christmas ... in other words, right after getting through the brutal big papers, special sections, holiday tournaments, etc. of the holiday season, and just in time to make some far-off suit's bottom line balance.

And in case I didn't know it well enough after 18-plus years in the business, this thread is a "great" reminder that all of us are nothing more than a barrel of ink or an old computer hard drive to the people who really run newspapers. Something to eventually be discarded.

 

I repeat ... has there been any good news coming out of "Journalism" and newspapers in the last several years. Anything? It's time to jump ship. Get out people. Get out.

 

It's all business these days.
Except when they need to load you up extra.
Then it's We Are Family. So Take One for the Team.

But there is no team left. No family. I'll miss it, but I got out.