WE'RE COMING UP on the anniversary of Black Tuesday, the day the Chronicle lightened its leaky ship by throwing a bunch of editors, reporters, photographers, and staffers overboard.
The drill went like this for selected . . . editors and reporters Tuesday: a telephone call, a trip to human resources, a severance package, an escort out of the building.
Thanks. Best wishes. Goodbye. Come back for your stuff on Saturday.
The long-awaited layoffs had arrived.
"People just disappeared," one observer said. "It's been a horrible day," said another. Editor Jeff Cohen described it as "a sad day."
To honor the memory of Black Tuesday, here are some snips from a fine crime novel built around the same experience.
Every eye in the newsroom follwed me as I left Kramer's office and walked back to my pod. The pink slips always came on Fridays and they all knew I had just gotten the word. Except they weren't called pink slips anymore. Now it was an RIF form -- as in Reduction in Force.
They all felt the slightest tingle of relief that it hadn't been them and the slightest tingle of anxiety because they still knew that no one was safe. Any one of them could be called next.
. . . .
Two months earlier the newspaper announced that one hundred employees would be eliminated from the editorial staff in order to cut costs and make our corporate gods happy. . . .
. . . . There was no newspaper out there in the market for an over-forty cop shop reporter. Not when they had an endless supply of cheap labor -- baby reporters . . . minted fresh every year at USC and Medill and Columbia, all of them technologically savvy and willing to work for next to nothing. Like the paper and ink newspaper itself, my time was over. It was about the Internet now. It was about hourly uploads to online editions and blogs. It was about television tie-ins and Twitter updates. It was about filing stories on your phone instead of calling in to rewrite. The morning paper might as well be called the Daily Afterthought. Everything in it was posted on the web the night before.
. . . .
I was already beginning to see my shove out the door as an opportunity. Deep down, every journalist wants to be a novelist. It's the difference between art and craft. Every writer wants to be considered an artist and I was now going to take a shot myself. . . .
. . . .
"She's very good and she's hungry, but she doesn't have the chops. Not yet, at least, and that's the problem, isn't it? The newspaper is supposed to be the community's watchdog and we're turning it over to the puppies. Think of all the great journalism we've seen in our lifetimes. The corruption exposed, the public benefit. Where's that going to come from now with every paper in the country getting shredded? Our government? No way. TV, the blogs? Forget it. My friend who took the buyout in Florida says corruption will be the new growth industry without the papers watching."
. . . .
. . . . At one time the newsroom was the best place in the world to work. A bustling place of camaraderie, competition, gossip, cynical wit and humor, it was at the crossroads of ideas and debate. It produced stories and pages that were vibrant and intelligent and considered important . . . . Now thousands of pages of editorial content were being cut each year and soon the paper would be like the newsroom, an intellectual ghost town. I many ways I was relieved that I would not be around to see it.
. . . .
"Then I want you to clear out your desk right now. I'll call security and have you escorted out."
. . . .
My box was as full as it was going to get. It looked pitiful. Not much for seven years on the job. I stood up, slung my backpack over my shoulder and picked up the box, ready to go.
. . . .
I headed for the elevator alcove, the security man trailing behind me. I took a wide look around the newsroom but made sure my eyes never caught anybody else's. I didn't want any good-byes. I walked along the row of glass offices and didn't bother to look in at any of the editors I had worked for. . . .
. . . .
. . . . I nodded and looked behind her at the wall covered with photos and cards and newspaper clips. She had a classic headline from one of the New York tabs on the wall: "Headless Body in Topless Bar."
(Michael Connelley, The Scarecrow, Grand Central Publishing (2008) (emphasis added))
The paperback is available for $9.99 at your nearby HEB.
To all the disappeared ones: Salut. Here's hoping you have just finished the last chapter of your novel.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, just to make you feel better about the whole thing . . .
Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s overall compensation as chairman of the New York Times Company "more than doubled to $6 million in 2009," reports Dow Jones Newswires.
(www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/03/sulzbergers-pay-doubles)
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