Bad news for columnists at the Strib, according to long-time lefty shill Brian Lambert:
Thursday afternoon at the Star Tribune saw the paper’s four metro columnists, Doug Grow, Nick Coleman, Katherine Kersten and Cheryl “CJ” Johnson called in to separate meetings with editors Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie and told, in so many words, that the paper was looking to scale back the number of columnists and would any of them care to raise their hands and volunteer for reassignment to the paper’s suddenly thin — and getting thinner — ranks of street-level reporters?
Nick Coleman and Doug Grow as beat reporters?
Be still my heart.
There were, as far as I can tell, no immediate takers. Later it was learned that quasi-metro columnist, James Lileks, was also given the same message.
I can see James as a thirties’ kind of reporter, with the pork-pie hat sitting behind a pebbled-glass door, smoking a Panter with his feet up on a steel desk next to the old Underwood.
But I’m guessing he can’t…
This sort of scale-back/down-sizing/gutting has been anticipated ever since the new owners, Avista Capital Partners took over and after the round of voluntary buy-outs that clipped 24 positions from the payroll two months ago. Widespread assumption in the Strib newsroom is that fewer columnists will soon be matched with fewer theater critics, fewer film critics and perhaps — all though this is very hard to imagine — fewer sports reporters. (Veteran NBA reporter, Steve Aschburner, has already left the paper.)
Which, of course, has to hurt Lambert, who I suspect is slavering to return to the Broadcast beat that the PiPress ejected him from.
Meanwhile, newly-arrived publisher, Par Ridder, the target of a much-publicized lawsuit accusing him essentially of industrial espionage, remains secure in his position.
Yeah, that whole “he’s brand new in the gig and hasn’t been proven guilty of anything yet” bit’ll get you every time.
UPDATE: Of course it’s worse than we thought. Lileks’ column is apparently on the chopping block.
Send a note to the Reader Rep.
UPDATE II: Via trackback, Britblogger Tim Worstall explains things to a European audience that need none with Yanks:
But any European observer, indeed any US manager who has dealt with union shops, would recognise what is going on here.
Take a well respected, well known and (for all I know, well paid) employee and assign him to duties manifestly ill suited to his talents at a time when you’re looking to cut costs and create redundancies.
Then hope they resign in disgust so that you don’t have to pay the “dismissal pay provision”.
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