The Bee Newspaper Guild web site has a more comprehensive list.The layoffs include veteran reporters that you have been reading for years. Many more of the downsized worked behind the scenes as editors, assistants and in important positions producing and distributing the paper every day.
Here are some of the names you might recognize.
Metro reporters Ramon Coronado, Jennifer Morita, Melissa Nix and Robert Faturechi were all among the layoffs. Walt Yost, a Bee union rep and longtime columnist for the Neighbors section (before they folded up a couple years back), was dismissed. Yost had been there since 1986.
Sportswriters Martin McNeil and Scott Howard-Cooper also were let go. And particularly tough for us to hear, the Bee cut music and pop-culture writer and SN&R alumna Rachel Leibrock, who joined the Bee in 2000. All of the reporters were given notice, so you can expect to see many of those bylines for the next several days. “I plan to do my job well for the remaining three weeks and will then focus on moving forward,” Leibrock told SN&R.
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20 comments:
Goodbye and thanks for 50+ years of relentlessly liberal biased coverage that showed hostility and open contempt for half your readers.
Many of my lefty friends are fond of saying of just about anyone right of Noam Chomsky that "when you put poison into the world, dont be surprised when it comes back to you."
Well, that sentiment aptly sums up the Sacramento Bee. If they has shown just touch of concern for the editorial world view of the 45%-50% of its readers who arent passionate leftwingers, I think more people today might care if the Bee stays alive or goes out of business forever. As a reluctant reader of the Bee for decades, I wont shed tear 1 if and when the Bee shuts its doors. They made their own bed by putting a liberal editiorial worldview above decent honest reporting for years, as anyone who has ever dealt with a Bee political reporter will tell you. And now theres no one left to save them. Funny how karma works.
Will the last one out the door turn off the lights?
10:52, oh man, that tale never gets old.
Hahaha, yes the and media model transformation coinciding with an economic downturn is all about partisan politics, not about debt overextension, glacial technical progression (newsroom oldschoolism), short-sightedness, credit markets, etc ...
Brilliant! You ... are just ... brilliant! *clap clap clap clap*
The Bee's guild site has a much more complete list of the layoffs at that paper. The comments after the list are filled with people wondering why management didn't take a hit.
Management can't take a hit.......if it does who will make all the important decisions (and all the high bucks).
WHATEVER ARE YOU THINKING?
To the anonymous poster who is thankful for the layoffs of the reporters at The Sacramento Bee, I say to you: HOW DARE YOU! These are good, honest, hard working people. Who cares if their views differ from yours. Are you saying anyone who has a liberal view should lose their job? What happened to the 1st Amendment? Our Right to Free Speech? Is it on our right when said speech falls into agreement with your own viewpoints?
God forbid anything happen to you and your job. God forbid that you find yourself without a paycheck, struggling to put food on the table for your family. The Good Lord made each and every one of us different for a reason. We are not necessarily to agree with one another, but respect the fact that we're all here with our own free will and that no one opinion should stand above the other.
If you didn't appreciate the viewpoint that these reporters shared, instead of complaining, why not write your own stories? Why not put yourself through journalism school and speak to the world from your perspective.
People like you truly disgust me. I have it in me to track you down and scratch your eyes out...but if I did, how would you ever look yourself in the mirror?
What an utter shame. Absolute and utter shame.
I wasn't glad anyone was losing their jobs before. But I am now.
12:34 PM:
Lots of other people HAVE lost their jobs. I say 10:52 AM has an excellent point, after sitting through many a fine editorial meeting where editors and reporters joked - 10:52 AM is right on target in his or her estimate - 45-50% of people in their circulation area. But The Bee did not want to listen or consider that they might be alienating half of possible readers with their incessant PC preaching.
Partisan politics aside: It is not good business for a general circulation newspaper to show contempt for half the local population, as The Bee famously has.
No, editorial staff is not responsible for the failed business side and huge debt. They ARE responsible for a circulation that flat-lined close to 20 years ago. Check out the circulation figures at the Audit Bureau of Circulations. You will see that as population burgeoned in the Sacramento region, Bee circulation remained stagnant. Why?
I do think 10:52 AM is off on the 50+ years of "relentless biased coverage." I think it might be about 20 or 30.
It takes more than just Editorial to put out a paper.
Remember that many good hard working folks, those who where doing the heavy work are being laid off. Of the 128 laid off 85 are in other Departments. 23 in Production and 62 in Circulation.
I feel for them.
If we can offer this site for recently laid-off journalists:
http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2009/03/laid-off-tips-for-suddenly-unemployed-journalists.html
I hate to see layoffs like this occur and never would want any misfortune to fall anyone.
I do believe that is what happens when you put the media into large corporate entities. I think what was lost was independence. I think every citizen wants to feel that their newspaper is independent not just cog in a huge wheel of a media conglomerate. It lost its local feel and seemed to be a machine that wanted to drive public opinion rather than inform.
Unfortunately all of these publications are tied together with no way of dis-assembling them. The weak links are killing the more profitable ones and the corporate debt overwhelms everything. I think the leaders of this company need to identify that bankruptcy is the best way out and then it can be rebuilt in a much different way. These continual layoffs are driving the company down in such a negative way that I can't even see how a worker would trust management and the board in what they say or do.
ditto, 2:16.
The morale is so low inside the newspapers, and the community now knows they receive an inferior product. I just wish management would worry about putting out a better product, in addition to all these cost-saving measures.
ditto 2:16 & 3:24
I think it might be about 20 or 30.
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The policy of affirmative action hiring and teaching "bias is a virture" actually began in the mid 1970's. It took several years before Newsrooms were flooded with little but liberal activists and a few more after that before they moved into policy making roles, so your estimation is probably right on the money.
I dont wish any bad karma on any line worker at the Bee...i.e the people who have no control over the reportorial or editorial conduct of the newspaper. Theyre of course exempted from my criticism. Dont be daft.
Last time I checked, the worker Bees dont show up to press conferences and harrass people with hostile questions invariably framed from a liberal activist viewpoint.
And in fact, Bee management is more to blame than anyone if these decent worker-Bee folks get the axe. Management has to make sure the business isnt run into the ground, something the Bee's Big Heads have colossally failed to do over a period of not just years but decades.
It is not the Bee critic who is to blame if blue collar decent folks get canned. That responsibility lies with the editorial managers and business-types who sell a flawed product.
Also maybe 50+ years is a bit off. My personal experience with the Bee's liberal bias and hostility to half its readers only goes back to the late
70's.
I stand by my comments.
How about a list of the other Bee staffs. We'd like to send our regards.
"I stand by my comments.
March 13, 2009 10:11 AM"
But, as usual, you won't sign your name.
Les Weatherford
The only people who are more lame than The Bee's newsroom managers are the snakes who populate this site.
And even the initial item -- "List of reporters ...." -- is not accurate. Walt Yost is a fine veteran reporter but never was a columnist in the Neighbors/regional editions.
The Bee(ess) gets rid of seemingly "good" reporters, yet they keep scumbags like Marcos Breton and Andy Furillo.
No wonder they're almost dead.
I say fire Margie Lundstrom, who wouldn't know balanced, unbiased reporting if it bit her in her eye.
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