Terrible newspaper firings/layoffs

No apology necessary. It's three years in the past and I'm in another career where when you love the job it loves you back.

 

I agree. I think the only exception are what I call the one percenters. That's the group where if they were ever let go, they would be hired within a week or so. That's usually columnists or someone who works at ESPN, CBS Sports, SI, Fox Sports. There will always be jobs for those people.

The other 99 percent. There are those who have lost their jobs and those who are waiting to lose their jobs.

 

Remember when Sun Media made some massive cuts a few years ago, our shop was in the middle of a big staff Christmas Party. Started to get calls and emails from our colleagues about what was happening.
Even though we were miraculously sparred (we were hit a year later) it sure dampened the party.

 

"We are letting you out of prison/indentured servitude the newspaper business." Best Christmas present EVER!

 

What Paxton did when it took over the Herald-Sun in Durham was pretty brutal.

 

I had a friend who was at a decent sized newspaper that decided to hand out layoffs over a two-day period. Over those two days, the editors call in every employee to tell them whether they had a job or not. After sweating it out through a long first day and a sleepless night, my friend got the phone call and pink slip toward the end of the second day.

 

So, what's the word?

 

A buddy of mine experienced a similar situation recently after being SE of a small daily for almost a year. The guy (who had a baby just a few months old at the time) covered football media days, then stopped by the office the next day ready to put together a breaking news story. The ME asked to meet with him once he walked into the office and said we're letting you go because it just isn't working out. Even told him the previous SE had already accepted his old job.

As the fired SE walked out of the office he found out that the previous SE, who had been rehired while there was no real job opening, had already written a story about the breaking news from earlier in the day. Total breakdown of communication and a complete lack of decency and respect.

 

Brutal. I remember hearing about that now.

My worst experience was actually a terrible non-firing. I was allowed to keep working but ...

New ME had it in for me, preferring that a fave of his fill my role in the newsroom. But I didn't grasp it fully at the time and there hadn't been anything as blatant as a phonied-up harsh review. About that time, unrelated, I got a call from a SE at another paper, offering me basically a lateral move in duties, slight bump in pay. Preferred to stay where I was, so I asked for a moment of the ME's time to gauge my prospects (mostly for a raise anytime soon).

He had nothing but upbeat things to say re: performance, duties, future pay. So I turned down the other paper. Two weeks later, my ME kneecaps me, giving my spot to his boy and putting me on duty that 90 percent of folks in newsroom -- and in the public -- would say was a demotion. Of course, it wasn't "officially" a demotion because they didn't lower my pay. As if that's all that matters.

ME then smiled his sick-ass smile at me, knowing I'd turned down the other job already. It had been offered to their second choice a day earlier, so there was no Plan B.

Left that dump a year later (took awhile to find right spot). Fortunately, that ME got his, too. Unfortunately, not before he had screwed with lots of journalists' lives and pocketed big bucks.

 

Does your cousin practice international law? I got the heave-ho from my job in Indonesia at the end of August. Despite negotiating a one-year extension back in December, they told me to get out by the end of last month and refused to pay my final three months of salary and one week of comp time.

I kinda figured it would end like this, especially with the owner treating the paper as a vanity project/political vehicle rather than a journalistic effort, but it doesn't make me feel any better.

 

When I got sacked about five years ago, it seems it was a fairly garden variety layoff. I got a call from the EE asking me to come in to the office the next morning, which was my day off. So I knew something bad was going down. I immediately called my SE, who had no idea what was going down, but of course we all feared the worst. My mind was racing a mile a minute and I slept maybe an hour or two. I called everyone I knew, hoping somebody could provide some kind of plausible alternative to what I knew was coming. Next day, sat in a little room with the publisher, EE and head of HR where they gave me my walking papers. They gave me a box to pack up my desk. At that point, everyone in the newsroom knew something was going down because every 20 minutes or so a bleary-eyed former colleague would appear, clean out their desk and head out. They officially told the newsroom in an all-hands meeting that afternoon. Meanwhile, the SE walked me out to my car and offered to do whatever was possible to help me land on my feet (and stood there while I smoked about a half-dozen cigarettes to try to keep from totally losing it). That SE made good on that promise.

I was furious with the the world at the time. I moved my life more than 2,000 miles and less than two years later had the rug pulled out from under me, a few weeks before Christmas no less. But since so much time has passed I've let go of much of the animosity. It was a great sports section with a ton of talented, enthusiastic people at every turn. I sometimes still wonder about what might have been.

 

It happened a few years ago. A few people got to spend the afternoon cleaning out their desks. At same meeting, we were told we were launching some new publication. Colleague looked at me at whispered "Whose going to paginate THAT?" It did not end well.