UPDATED
Multiple reports are coming in from people in multiple departments that the layoffs have indeed delayed and will not conclude by Friday. Word circulating is that Corporate lawyers want more time.
The layoffs appear more likely to happen next week sometime. No further details at this time.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A blog for The People of the Dallas Morning News to share information about a career-altering event that they had no control to stop.
Management wants to trim roughly 20-30 jobs through attrition by next June. What are the chances?
Why are we here?
Because it is honorable to recognize the individuals who toiled in the fields, doing their part to make the Dallas Morning News as good a product as it could be. But due to financial forces beyond their control, they were made a "voluntary severance offer." Had that been in copy, an editor would have changed that to read "buyout."
Continue reading.
Buyout class of '08
- Abrams, Kerri: page designer/F!D Luxe and Looks, news art
- Anderson, Karin Shaw: reporter, metro
- Beauchamp, Jenni: news assistant, metro
- Becker, Stephen: assistant editor, arts
- Black, James: graphics editor, news art
- Daniel, Mike: writer/copy editor, arts
- Dugger, Jason: design editor/sports, news art
- Dunklin, Mary: Healthy Living editor, lifestyles
- Eckberg, Jon: paginator/copy editor, sports
- Fox, Laurie: reporter, metro
- Hawkins, Amy: office manager, state
- Jau, Mei-Chun: senior video producer/editor.
- Kelly, Terry: senior assistant news editor, news desk
- Leeson, David: photographer, videographer
- Marta, Suzanne: reporter, business
- McLemore, David: reporter, state
- Miller, Jeff: assistant editor, sports
- Moore, Joel: page designer/copy editor, sports
- Pinson, Travis: copy editor/paginator, Quick
- Pruitt, Richard Michael: photographer, photo
- Schlegel, Erich: photographer, Austin bureau.
- Velez, Chris: paginator/copy editor, Quick
Jobs openings
Job boards
Employment issues
Library
E-mail us
- therockoftruth@gmail.com
- (Sharing reliable information keeps everyone informed during this time of uncertainty. The Rock will not release your name or job title, or quote directly from your e-mail unless you give permission first. This applies to tenured managers, new employees and part-time clerks alike.)
26 comments:
As a 10/27, I'm reliving this all over again.
We understand the weirdness. But for sanity's sake, start talking now before it's too late.
You folks need to help each other, network and reinforce your talents in conversation before they rip you all apart.
If management is watching this board, sign your names.
Don't go willingly into their darkness.
This is agony.
Anyone else see irony in today's DISD layoff story?
not to be paranoid but does anyone think a delay suggests management is considering deeper cuts due to increasing economic troubles and the need to do them all at the same time?
It's not a stretch to believe that the cuts will be deeper than first described. Third quarter numbers are bound to be awful, and there is no relief in sight. Have you seen the stock value? If the downward spiral continues, Belo is flirting with being removed from the stock exchange. Future cuts are a virtual certainty. It takes valuable lawyer time to conduct layoffs. You do the math.
It's not paranoia at all. McClatchy wound up making two cuts this year. It would make sense to make one bigger cut than to go through the process twice. As the earlier post says, it's agony to go through.
Just be glad that A.H. Belo left its debt with Belo, but I wonder where the cash comes from when those well-maintained yet old presses in Plano need replacing.
No paranoia at all.
As a previous poster said, the company stock hit an all-time low today of $3.20 compared to a 52-week high of $16.35.
Belo, the TV sister company, also hit an all-time low of $3.14 compared to a 52-week high of $19.70.
The family's wealth is shrinking day by day. Cutting more jobs is very plausible.
Under the category of utter cluelesssness, posters placed in the back elevators this week remind us that today, Thursday, is National Boss Day.
Let's celebrate our bosses before they have to lay us off.
Some have said the layoff day will now be a week from tomorrow.
Others have said early next week.
Anyone hear anything else?
Management group went to layoff school today. No details.
Signs you are about to be laid off:
1) Your boss refers to you by your employee number.
2) Your boss doublechecks your phone contact numbers.
3) Your boss looks at his shoes while speaking to you.
4) Your boss takes alternate routes to avoid passing your desk.
5) Your boss inquires what time you normally come in the office.
6) Your boss summons you to attend an important meeting he hadn't mentioned before.
7) Your phone and your computer sign-on no longer function.
Should the opportunity arise, remember the line from Broadcast News uttered when the boss asks his newly laid off employee if there is something he can do. The response: "You could die soon."
If it's any solace for those who are about to leave, at least you won't be around to see what a screwed up mess management has left in your wake. I wouldn't bet one share of Belo stock that there is a real plan for dealing with the aftermath. And I bet the same bosses who helped strip the newsroom to the bone will still go home early every night.
There likely won't be more buyout money after this. Follow the industry trends. Note to all of you "survivors": You're in more trouble with every month or year you "hang on." Try letting go! More cuts coming soon after we go. Remember all the promises of enlightened change and a difficult but exciting future after 2006? Right! Nothing changed, except that things got worse financially. Do you still trust what trickles down from on high after the lies, bone-headed decisions and/or inaction? The Verticles. Yes. They will fix everything. Uh, what the hell are they? And why still the antiquated layers of AMEs and DMEs? What do they do? Always seem ineffective when faced with problems and concerns in the ranks. Speak up! There is no future there for you to lose. There is only the present malaise, day after day. And I'm talking especially to the twentysomethings. Why do you value yourselves so little and stay in this mess? Those ahead of you got in during the glory days with no Web in sight. What's your excuse?
We can NEVER have enough DMEs and AMEs.
Clueless as they are, even management has kind of figured out that they are top heavy. Maybe because the publisher and general manager told them so. The ME has already shown a chart that eliminates one DME position in Local News. Word is that one of the AME positions in Local News will also go away. But you can also bet it will be some sort of nonsensical, smoke-and-mirrors kind of reduction. If the management group is truly reduced in size, it will probably hit people who don't deserve it. Those managers who have shown little leadership and much bravado and brown-nosing will land softly. Hints of this have already been dropped. (The DME could become an uber-reporter; the AME an economic crisis czar.) Meanwhile, competent working stiffs -reporters and editors - who are putting out the paper despite suffocating, inept managers will lose their jobs. And because those who managers who are spared have higher salaries, more worker bees must be cut. It's Belo math. It will also be the death of the newspaper. Not to worry, those who brought you this sorry excuse for management have a nice cushy parachute waiting for them.
You wrote: "Those managers who have shown little leadership and much bravado and brown-nosing will land softly."
I agree with what you're suggesting, but I'll suggest that they won't really be landing very softly. Managers over 40 are in it deep if they are merely moved. It's all about the Benjamins now. Institutional memory has dementia, so those types will wear giant bulls-eyes during the next rounds of layoffs. Allies and enemies shift with the wind now. So sad. And most managers are older with kids and little or no hope of landing anything close to their current salaries somewhere else. And that's even if they can get a job interview. Hard to feel sorry for that breed, but I guess they did it to themselves for thinking things would always stay the way they were as long as they just said "yes" all the time. And that lazy-minded thinking goes on right below the AMEs and DMEs, too. Everybody needs to wake up! The dream is over.
Since it's a lock that members of management monitor this blog, a question for anyone bold enough to answer:
Why would the staff believe that after everything that's happened, after all the layers of managers that have been created while the number of reporters has dwindled, why would those you manage believe you are capable of turning things around after even more of us are dispatched?
Let's face it, management needs some help. Times are tough, and we need all the bright ideas we can get. Fortunately, I have some.
1) Pull your heads out of your patoots and act like journalists. Focus groups and consultants are out; good old fashioned news judgment is in.
2) Enough already with acting like we can do the things we did 20 or even 10 years ago. Let's cover the dickens out of what we are still in position to cover.
3) We still have many good people, young and old. Let's use them smartly, on good stories that readers can't get anywhere else. Quit chasing TV or blogs.
4) This is a hard one. Slash the bureaucracy. It's killing us. Put good people in position and let them do their jobs.
5) Treat the staff like adults. Talk to them. Lose the imperialism. Abandon your offices. Don't go home at 6 p.m. when your staff is working late.
You're listening, aren't you?
The reflexive slashing of bodies below the source of the cancer is truly a weak-minded and immoral approach. Can't corporate ever try other quick fixes that wouldn't send many of its best and brightest packing? What happened to the old salary freeze or even agreed-upon salary reductions with the promise of decent raises when the company begins to perform better again. Management throws in the towel every time it slips in the ring. It just gives up. Where's Rocky Balboa when you need him? I think many people would agree to salary reductions in order to stay in newspapering/journalism, especially in an area where they want to raise their kids. The company really does have a responsibility to workers because, well, it brought them here, some from very far away. It's called capitalism with a conscience. This used to be the norm in America before greed became our God. AT&T's regulated profit before divestiture was 9%, and that was considered great. The shareholders despise Belo stock now, anyway. Body count isn't going to matter to them. So what's to lose besides becoming a new, money-making beacon of journalism based on a composite-medium approach with smart capital investment in available technologies in addition to the Web? The Web is NOT the answer to newspaper companies' woes. However, there exist technologies that could save the day, or at least the Morning News. But somebody hit it on the nose: Sense of entitlement as managers, beginning with those barely on the first rung. Too many rungs, as well. Until that's all corrected, this company, and all companies, are doomed. Jim Moroney stated during his first address to the troops up on that stage over at the Hyatt that any manager acting in a condescending manner to their workers would be dealt with harshly. Guess he didn't really mean it.
Here, here. I believed what you said, Jim. I guess the dollar speaks louder than anything we are doing for he people of Dallas.
The layoffs probably won't happen until late next week. I think we may be overblaming some mid-level managers who have very little say about all of this. the Newspaper is dying, that's the fact. It's not a bunch of ame or dme's faults. We shouldn't pull each other apart. We've all done too much good work and had too many good times together......journalists should stick together--it's happening to all of us. These cuts won't stop and they will get to everyone. No one is above them. We've all just got to figure out a way to transition out. I wish everyone luck in finding something new that is as fulfilling as this career was.
Sometimes I'll find myself in conversation with an intelligent person out in the world, and they react with disbelief when I say the newspaper is dying. "There HAS to be a newspaper," they say, instinctively. So I always say: "OK. Do you get the paper?"
Person (looking away): "Well, I try to read it on the weekends at Starbucks when I'm not too busy."
Me (thinking): "I really need a new job!"
I have also found that when people do read, many still want the broadsheet and don't want to read on a screen. They cite eye strain and just wanting to be away from the computer.
Newspapers are changing more than dying. When the economy rebounds, the News' brand name in North Texas will still be huge. When people say there must always be a local newspaper, they mean its presence, its voice, not its form. This is why I find the cutting of humans so completely cynical. Attrition will continue, and there are other options. A lot of us who were always the same ones called upon to create things for this company have discussed form, function and modes of delivery for many years. The kids truly don't know what they don't know about the communications business. It's not their fault; they were just late. Like all major areas of study, communications includes immutable basic principles that will forever be applicable, no matter the source and vehicle. These principles are simply the basics, and someone alluded to that earlier. Like Einstein with relativity, Al Neuharth created USA Today not in a vacuum, but from WITHIN the classical model, but he turned it on its head. He created something wholly unique but used the basics to show where the industry had it both wrong -- and right. Now 26 years later, Today seems nothing short of genius! If Neuharth could summon that kind of vision 26 years ago, certainly somebody could step up now with all the new technologies. I can't believe I'm defending him now, but for all his flaws, Neuharth wasn't a slave to greed. He was a newspaper man and wanted to create and be great (all creative narcissists want that). But now, the dollar, not the idea, is the primary concern. Innovation will never bubble up from the bottom line.
This is the format you will be trimmed to fit.
You will be aggregators of online content, content which your publisher wishes to promote and nothing else, or you will be working elsewhere.
There will no longer be enough dollars to promote any interests but his own, in the most cost-efficient format for doing so.
If you want to see journalism, rent a classic movie.
My question is, What are they going to aggregate? Uninformed blog flotsam? Or maybe just surviving dead tree product from the locally irrelevant?
The root of this really started in the mid- to late '80s when they unsnapped newspaper managers' skullcaps and inserted the word "product" between the gaps and figured they'd be all right.
When the rest of the paper joins the FUN-FUN BUNCH in Editorial and becomes the Dallas Morning Blog, maybe some of us could start a publication that offers basic journalism. The public won't know what it has till it's gone, of course. But I bet we could get Jim and Robert to sell us one of the presses cheap! They should have taken advantage of the fire sale at Reunion: "Buy one of our presses, get a Zamboni at no extra cost!"
Does anybody think Bob would resign over the dismal performance and human carnage during his watch? Didn't a handful of editors at other larger papers do the honorable thing this year. L.A.? Chicago?
Post a Comment