The last days of a journalist

March 16, 2008

2008-11-04T22:16:00.000-08:00

Apparently an e-mail is floating around that supposedly says freelancers who wrote stories for the Daily News in February will have to wait until April to get paid. I have not seen such an e-mail, but someone made reference to it on sportsjournalists.com. It spawned two blog topics. The first was more than 20 pages and had more than 20,000 views.
The information on these posts are pretty reliable, considering the sources. But without actually seeing the e-mail, it's hard to be certain freelancers are not getting paid for the work they've completed.
The sad part is, if it is true, it is not surprising. It's another example of how little Singleton and his people value the work of their journalists.
Louis Brewster, the sports editor of the San Bernardino Sun and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, a man I have worked with and for on occasion, especially during races at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, called me on Friday. His staff suffered cuts in the past weeks. They've also had to move. He said they're in an office with no computers, no phones, few supplies, but plenty of empty desks. Yet another example of how much our work in valued.
I asked Louis about his freelance situation and he told me he has to get approval for all his freelance assignments from his publisher, a man named Steve Lambert. He was the guy who laid off/fired Paul Oberjuege, perhaps the most experienced and knowledgeable sportswriter and columnist on his staff. Oberjuege was also probably the most expensive. Lambert also laid off one of his photographers the day after his wife gave birth to their first child.
Louis also said he knows his freelancers are getting paid because he received a check for one of his writers sent to his office address instead of the writer's home address my mistake. That's at least two papers in the chain that are paying their writers.
Later that night I talked to Gene Warnick, the sports editor for the Daily News. He told me that the sports department was $20,000 over budget for the month and he was going to have to reorganize the department. Staffers were going to have cover assignments the part-timers who were laid off used to cover.
It's not the way Gene would ideally like to assign his staff writers. But he said he is being forced to cover sports for a newspaper with a 150,000 circulation like it has the budget of a 50,000 circulation newspaper.
It's hard to understand the logic behind covering a high school football game at the expense of an NCAA basketball tournament game. That choice has yet to be made, but Gene is getting closer to having to make that call every day. Somehow this makes the newspaper worthwhile to read?

March 13, 2008

2008-11-04T21:54:00.000-08:00

I got two phone calls the other day. One was from Jeremy Riffle, a PR guy for Roger Penske's IndyCar Series team. He wanted to see if I could have lunch with Helio Castroneves, one of the team's drivers, a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and the reigning champion of "Dancing with the Stars." Helio is actually going to be in Los Angeles to promote the TV show and for nothing race related. I figured it would be a good opportunity to catch up with Helio and have lunch at the Four Seasons. That's one of the advantages of my new job at the newspaper. I'll be able to go to more things like this. One of the disadvantages is that I'll probably be in the office most nights taking phone calls from high school coaches and scorekeepers reporting results from games. Most of it isn't too bad, baseball and softball line scores are easy to record. But track and swim meet results are painfully long. There are calculus problems that are easier to understand than tennis box scores.
I've known Jeremy for a long time, almost 20 years, as long as I've been covering auto racing. One of the drivers who used to race in CART, the Champ Car World Series and the Indy Racing League was Bryan Herta, who went to high school with me. I have covered his career at every newspaper I have worked at and he has always competed against the Penske guys in one way or another.
I told Jeremy I wasn't going to be in newspapers much longer, probably my last year. I think he was a little surprised by this. We talked about the IRL and the Penske team racing at Long Beach again after being absent for ten years. They won't be back until next year. I told him I probably won't be working for a newspaper by then.
Later that day Bryan Herta called me. He was preparing for the 12 Hours of Sebring, the opening race for the American Le Mans Series in Florida. He races for a team owned in part by Michael Andretti, which won the Sebring race in what is called the LMP2 class last year.
Our 20th high school reunion is this year in July. I asked him if he was going. He said no; he has a race the weekend of the reunion.
For some reason, the reunion has become my finish line. Somehow, if I can stay being a sportswriter and a journalist until the reunion it will feel like I've accomplished my goal. I can walk away from newspapers knowing I achieved what I set out to do in high school.

March 8, 2008

2008-11-03T11:01:00.000-08:00

Somebody on sportsjournalists.com added the number of people laid off at the Los Angeles Newspaper Group. It was at least 70. Add in the circulation director and administrative assistants and librarians and the total is higher. At least 70 newsroom people lost their jobs in the Los Angeles area, from Torrance in the South Bay to Redlands in the outskirts of the Inland Empire.
In Northern California, the newsroom people of the San Jose Mercury News were told to wait for a phone call Friday. If they got a call, they were supposed to come in for work. If they didn't get a call, they didn't have a job.
The Bay Area News Group, a collection of papers in the eastern part of San Francisco, had 107 people take voluntary buyouts, enough to avoid layoffs. Posters on sportsjournalists.com wanted to know if anyone got BANGed.
I read a story online about the financial health of Dean Singleton. One of the assistant city editors said he thought Singleton was leveraged so much, he needed to maintain at least a 10 percent profit margin just to manage his debt and make payments on his loans. He wasn't too far off.
Singleton's credit rating sropped twice in the past week. The amount of money he owes to publically traded companies is astronomical. There was no way to factor in the amount of money he owes to private investors. His rating is BB-. Apparently a rating of B is junk bond status. He's at least two rings below that.
The only question that remains is: Will Singleton run out of money or employees first?

March 7, 2008

2008-11-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

There were more layoffs than I care to count at other newspapers owned by Dean Singleton. It started with the Pasadena Star News losing four in the newsroom. Then in San Gabriel, Whittier, Ontario, San Bernardino, Redlands.
A sports columnist named Paul Oberjuege was among them. He's been covering sports in the Inland Empire, San Bernardino, for more than 30 years. I would see him periodically at the race track in Fontana. Inevitably, every year, twice a year when the track added a second set of NASCAR races, he would write about how much he hates NASCAR. It probably generated a lot of responses. NASCAR is a polarizing sport. Traditional sports fans and even some sportswriters tend to dislike NASCAR. But MILLIONS of people in the country are fans. As I'm finding out on Facebook, NASCAR has a following on Europe, Australia and Canada.
But Paul O loved to rail on NASCAR or at least he gave that impression in his columns. I have to wonder if I got tired of reading the same critical story of NASCAR, do other readers get tired of it too? I have to think yes. There are times I feel like I'm writing the same story over and over again. I try to avoid it and I haven't felt that way in a while, but that's a danger of sportswriting: The games and events we cover have a familiar outcome and the people we write about rarely change.

March 6, 2008

2008-11-03T10:29:00.000-08:00

Bill Dwyre, a sports columnist for the L.A. Times, said goodbye in his column today to four sportswriters from the Daily News who got laid off.

Finally, a sad goodbye and fervent wish: L.A. Daily News sportswriters Matt McHale, Billy Witz, Heather Gripp and Matt Kredell all were asked to depart their jobs Friday as the newspaper business continues to scrape flesh off its bones. They were competitors, some friends, all respected.
May they all land well, feed their families and harbor lifelong bad thoughts about the people who did this to them and their business.

One of the last things I asked Matt McHale to do for me was look at a story I wrote about Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon. I wrote a few stories for a special NASCAR section the paper puts out before the races at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. I thought it was the best of the five stories I wrote for the section. I had a piece on Elliott Sadler and how much of a college basketball fan he is, one on Ryan Newman winning the Daytona 500, an interview with Reed Sorenson in which I asked him about Ashley Judd, who is married to his new teammate, Dario Franchitti, and a story on Toyota Racing Development and what happens at its headquarters in Costa Mesa.
Matt like the Toyota story best.
I don't remember a lot of the good stories Billy wrote when he was covering UCLA, but I've heard enough people say otherwise to think differently. One story that's being shared is how Billy chased down a potential football coach candidate through an airport, bought a ticket for a flight with his own credit card so he could get in the terminal to interview him. Apparently the candidate, Mike Price, was avoiding the media about his interest in the UCLA job. Billy got one of the few interviews he ever gave about the job.
Unfortunately, what I remember most about Billy is having to rewrite one of his USC stories. The Coliseum was in danger of losing the USC football team to the Rose Bowl. A group of boosters was proposing renovations, offering to pay for them, but making some difficult demands. They eventually worked out a deal, the Trojans stayed in the Coliseum, but writing about commission meetings and stadium deals were not Billy's strengths.
Kredell almost always wins our fantasy sports leagues. Whenever someone else wins, we rejoice. Matt Kredell is not the most gracious winner and always an entertaining loser.
The only thing I remember vividly about Heather was that she played in a fantasy baseball league one year and took Eric Karros way too early.
All four of the sportswriters who were laid off had their faults, none were perfect or even the best at what they did. Very good at times, but nothing exceptional. But none of them deserved to lose their jobs. What they lacked in talent they made up for in dedication. They made up the meat of the sports department, as Bill Dwyre referred to in his column. Without them, the readers have little more than bones to gnaw on when they pick up the newspaper.

March 5, 2008

2008-11-03T10:19:00.000-08:00

Randy Harvey, the sports editor from the L.A. Times, called me Monday. He called to say he was happy to see I wasn't one of the people who was laid off at the Daily News. I called him last week, talked to him about possibly doing some writing for the Times if I got laid off at the Daily News. He said he like my stuff; I don't know how much of that is his being nice or honest, probably a combination of both. It was nice to hear, but at the same time, it doesn't really matter a whole lot. The Times is preparing for layoffs as well. I saw a list of people taking buyouts yesterday and I had a hard time believing some of the names I saw.
Cecilia Rasmussen and Robyn Norwood were two that jumped out at me. Cecilia writes a column called "Then and Now" about historic places in Los Angeles and old stories that deserve revisiting. Rick Quist and I would talk about the stories she wrote from time to time. As unique as the stories Cecilia wrote, Rick always had something more to add or a different version. It reminded me that the truth is always at best a gray area.
Robyn covered college basketball among other things for the sports department. Seeing her name on the list reminded me of all the the old Times sportswriters who are no longer there. Jim Murray, Allan Malamud, Shav Glick, Mike Downey, writers I read when I was younger and made me want to be a sportswriter. Damn them!
Even if Randy Harvey wanted to hire me to be one of his sportswriters, he couldn't do it. He has no place for me. I'm beginning to wonder if there's any place left for me in journalism.

March 2, 2008

2008-11-01T23:18:00.000-07:00

May my last breath be a cry against injustice than a whisper in the ear of uncertainty.

I wrote those words on sportsjournalists.com. I've been posting a lot lately. Most of it was updates on how things were going at work. Some was defending those who made the decision to quit rather than be laid off. The logic being quitting would save someone else's job.
But a lot of good people quit, leaving some not-so-good people behind. Most of the people who were laid off at the Daily News were part-timers, some were invaluable.
Rick Quist, the executive news editor, described as starting at the Daily News when God was a baby, was laid off. There was Karen Duffy Gindick Walker. Her name was synonymous withy perfection: Whenever anyone wrote a headline on a story that perfectly fit the specs on the dummy, it was called a Duffy.
There were 20 other stories of dedicated journalists, stories of reporters chasing down football coaches in airports, stories of a guy who went from the finance department to the sports department because he would come into the editorial department to watch World Cup soccer games so often, he made an impression on the sports editor.
Nothing was fair about who lost their jobs and who was spared. No one feels good about still having a job, save one person, the publisher. That's the saddest part. If the people around me feel the same way as I do, the newsroom is the last place any of us want to be.
What's worse is I know it's only temporary. I can get out pretty much whenever I want. Yet I have this unexplainable desire to stay until the ship is completely submerged.

March 1, 2008

2008-11-01T23:10:00.001-07:00

It's the day after what's being called Black Friday. The Daily News cut 22 newsroom positions, a cost-saving move dubbed by the publisher as an expense adjustment. The Daily News wasn't the only newspaper in the country to experience cuts on Friday. The Daily Breeze in Torrance and the Long Beach Press-Telegram, newspapers in the Los Angeles Newspaper Group chain, and two newspapers that regularly ran my auto racing stories, lost newsroom people too. The Daily Breeze lost eight. The Press-Telegram news and copy desks are being combined with the Daily Breeze's. Essentially 21 people have to reapply for 12 jobs if they want to continue working.
In New York, Newsday went through a r0und of layoffs that eliminated more than 100 jobs. Two papers in Philadelphia went through a round of cuts on Friday. It's going to get worse.
The Bay Area News Group owned by the same man, Dean Singleton, who owns the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, is going to lose about 200 newsroom people out of a collective staff of about 1,100.
That seems to be the magic number, 20 percent. The total numbers might be different, but a number of newspapers across the nation lost 20 percent of its staff.
I have the feeling I barely survived, if you can call it that. I have other plans at this point. I can become a teacher, spend more time with my family, friends and kids. I like that idea. My wife and kids like that idea.

Jan. 14, 2008

2008-11-01T23:05:00.000-07:00

For some reason I had the desire to defend a sports radio host an Internet message board I frequent. I usually go there to see what other sportswriters and editors are discussing. It can vary from politics to movies to music to TV and of course sports and the media. One post was about how this radio host was bashing the Baseball Writers of America for messing up the Hall of Fame voting. I heard it when he made his point on the radio. I agreed with most of his arguments.
However most of the posters on the website missed his argument simply because they don't like him.

Jan. 8, 2008

2008-03-16T22:06:00.000-07:00

Hans Gutneckt is a photographer at the Daily News. I've known him since high school. He's a couple years older than I am, played football. By comparison, I was a swimmer and on the school's academic decathlon team. We didn't exactly hang out with the same group of kids in high school. Still, we've known each other for a long time.
We were talking the night before about how much more work we're being required to do without compensation. In addition to shooting his two or three assignments a day, he's also being asked to shoot video for the paper's web site, make photo galleries and slide shows, not just for the Daily News web site, but for all the papers in the Media News Group: newspaper sites in San Jose, Monterey, Long Beach, Pasadena, San Gabriel, Ontario, Torrance. Some days he's working 14 hours. Those are long days. At the same time, he still loves his job. That's part of the problem and part of the reason I like being surrounded by journalists.
Most have the dedication to their job few have. But the dedication comes at the expense of compensation. Few journalists get paid what they're worth. Many have been asked to increase their responsibilities without an increase in pay. The job they do on a daily basis is invaluable. Yet there are those making personnel decisions who believe young and cheap outweighs quality and experience.
Providing people with information, commentary, facts and stories is part of our job, a job most everyone in the newsroom takes very seriously.
But there are those who treat that responsibility with the delicacy of a bulldozer.

Jan. 4, 2008

2008-03-16T00:30:00.000-07:00

Ron Kaye, the boisterous editor of the Los Angeles Daily News, walked over to the news desk demanding that we tear up the front page. There was no breaking news, no fascinating profile, no tantalizing piece of copy he wanted to put out front for all of Los Angeles to see. He wanted to do what the Daily Breeze of Torrance did to its sports section two days earlier. The day after the Rose Bowl, the day after USC throttled Illinois in the biggest football game of New Year's Day, the Daily Breeze ran a full-page car dealer ad under its sports banner.
We had all seen it; all of us on the news desk, the sports desk, the metro desk, the day it came out. Ron had been on vacation; it was the first time he had seen it.
No one better than Ron knows how serious the problems are in newspapers. In the face of these troubling times, Ron has a way of making light of such an obvious mistake in judgment.
This is also the same man who a month prior told me I have "been dropping the ball" and needed to refocus my efforts.
That made me take the CBEST and seriously consider becoming a substitute elementary school teacher. A room full of third graders suddenly seemed much more appealing than an ungrateful, critical editor.
After passing the CBEST and knowing I have a little security if and when the newspaper industry finally collapses, the criticism wasn't so hard to take.
But the first time I heard it, it made me more upset than I've been in a long time. It reminded me of the time when I was working at my first newspaper, as editor of The Signal's Escape entertainment section, and all we had on staff was a part-time photographer -- no photo editors, a skeleton newsroom and no promise of reinforcements. I worked 20-hours days and walked out on deadline a week before I was getting married. I had another job that same day, as sportswriter for the Antelope Valley Press, but I also learned some valuable lessons that day.
One was that no matter how bad things get at a newspaper, always give notice before quitting. Journalism is a small world and word gets around. But another lesson I learned was never be afraid to leave a bad newspaper. Most of the papers I've worked at have been poorly managed. Profits are more important than news. Editorial departments are expendable. Journalists have little value to a publisher.
Seeing a full-page ad under a sports banner made that all too clear again. The Daily Breeze was a bad newspaper to work for. Technically, it was not the paper I worked for, but the man who owns the Daily News also owns the Daily Breeze. We are all guilty by association. It's fun to make light of another paper's mistake, but it easily could have been our mistake.
Because Ron has the temperament to look at a Daily Breeze sports front with a full-page ad on it and laugh is one of the reasons I am not a substitute teacher this day. But the day will come, soon, when I will be in a classroom rather than a newsroom on a daily basis.

Jan. 1, 2008

2008-03-13T21:58:00.000-07:00

It would take a blind man not to see the days of newspapers are numbered. This is no revelation. Newspapers have been dying for a long time. Some in the business say they've been dead for some time. What is clear is the media we know now won't be the media we know in 12 months. Sometimes I wonder if it will be the same media in the next 12 days or 12 hours. Technology and demands change so quickly, it's hard to know what the right answers are anymore. It's a very unsettling scenario for someone like me who wanted to be a journalist since the fifth grade. But it is ending. Not because newspapers are closing, shrinking, changing, but because the value of the written word is at an all-time low.

The journalists I know, the newspaper people I have worked with over the years, take pride in being defenders of the First Amendment, freedom of expression, members of the Fourth Estate. We're elitist to a point, defend the weak, provide a voice for the silent or the minority. We challenge authority, question injustice, but above all, report what we see and hear. That's the most important thing we do and the hardest. Tell people what's happening in a way that lets them decide how to respond. Being unbiased and fair is one of the most challenging aspects of a journalist's job. It is one that is constantly questioned and one that is mercilessly attacked.

I always felt my job was a privilege, even though it is protected in the Bill of Rights. Not my job in particular, but the freedom of the press is so important that the founders of the United States government made certain that future generations would not ignore its importance. No one in the press has a right to gainful employment in journalism, but we all have a responsibility to uphold the ideal of freedom of information. Questioning our leaders is part of how our system operates successfully. Journalists have provided that check on policymakers for centuries. But the world is changing and the questions are more complicated.

Unfortunately the answers are unpleasant and they aren't going to change anytime soon.