For Whom The Strib Tolls
By Mitch Berg
The City Pages is keeping a running tally of the newsroom staffers at the Strib who’ve taken buyouts or are otherwise leaving or moving about the paper.
Stribbers taking the buyout:
Eric Black – this is a whack upside the head. Black was one of the good ones.
Conrad Defiebre – this one, too. Defiebre actually had a track record as a journalist who could actually write the facts.
Pat Pheifer
Nancy Olsen
Doug Grow – bummer. Oh, I disagree with Grow about everything – but he was a good reporters. Which was probably the undoing of his column; unlike Lileks and Katherine Kersten, he’d actually worked as a beat reporter, which I’m going to presume made it likely the paper would carry through on its threat to assign some of its general columnists back to street reporting.
Susie Hopper
Linda Mack
Stormi Greener
Chuck Haga
Sharon Schmickle
Jim Boyd – I’m almost sad about this. Jim Boyd was a walking, breathing case study of both entrenched, preening media bias, but of the overweening arrogance of the American “journalistic” caste. With him in his office, conservative bloggers never had a shortage of material. With him gone, we may have to work at it.
Jay Weiner
Deborah Caulfield Rybak – I’ve quoted her many, many times over the years, in her capacity as the media beat reporter.
John Addington
Nancy Entwhistle
Tom Ford
Robyn Dochterman
Joe Kimball – Kimball covered Saint Paul, and did an excellent job.
Delma Francis
Larry (L.K.) Hanson
Heather Munro
Bob Jansen
Denise BrownfieldReassignments:
James Lileks will run Buzz.mn – which can only be a good thing for the Strib’s online enclave.
Steve Brandt will be covering City Hall
Kevin Diaz [going to Anchorage, apparently]
Paul Klauda is moving to Night AME (associate managing editor)
Oh, and some of the people who are leaving the paper are really petulant. This comment on Saturday was from someone labelled “Former Stribber (rowr!)” :
If you’ve read [James Lileks’] blog, you’d realize that he’s been hanging around the office the last few weeks, trying to bond with all the people he so assiduously ignored the last few years when he showed his face at 425 Portland about every six months.
If avoiding deadwood like FS(R) was part of James’ strategy, it would seem it worked.
June 4th, 2007 at 5:59 am
So, as someone who has considered telecommuting more over the last few years, is that how office-bound co-workers view telecommuters? Because I bet Lileks never once thought that he was ignoring people at the Strib.
On another matter, how in the crap can they let Grow go — again, almost no agreement with him on anything, but at least he can research and write well — and keep Nick Fricking Coleman? The least-talented columnist I have read since I was editing my high school newspaper? (Aside: back then the winner in that category was me.) The columnist who never passed up a cliche or an unwarranted cheap shot without putting it in his column with a tone that suggests he thought it was Pulitzer-quality brilliance? Who can only write non-garbage when he’s doing sentimental pieces on neighborhoods and people, but didn’t have the sense to concentrate on that? He gets to keep his column?
I can’t even comment on the Eric Black, it’s too ridiculous. Let’s just say it’s a very bad sign when a company pushes its best talent away.
On the bright side, there should be some openings for Hobby Columnists…
[/rant]
June 4th, 2007 at 6:18 am
So, as someone who has considered telecommuting more over the last few years, is that how office-bound co-workers view telecommuters? Because I bet Lileks never once thought that he was ignoring people at the Strib.
On another matter, how in the crap can they let Grow go — again, almost no agreement with him on anything, but at least he can research and write well — and keep Nick Fricking Coleman? The least-talented columnist I have read since I was editing my high school newspaper? (Aside: back then the winner in that category was me.) The columnist who never passed up a cliche or an unwarranted cheap shot without putting it in his column with a tone that suggests he thought it was Pulitzer-quality brilliance? Who can only write non-garbage when he’s doing sentimental pieces on neighborhoods and people, but didn’t have the sense to concentrate on that? He gets to keep his column?
I can’t even comment on the Eric Black, it’s too ridiculous. Let’s just say it’s a very bad sign when a company pushes its best talent away.
On the bright side, there should be some openings for Hobby Columnists…
{/rant}
June 4th, 2007 at 6:42 am
Actually I think reading the bleat the past week shows that he is preparing to say goodbye (one way or another) to a job he’s had for over a decade.
June 4th, 2007 at 9:21 am
I can’t help but be amazed at the attitude toward telecommuters coming from a newspaper that has promoted telecommuting as a way to get cars off of the road. Such hypocricy. I would be stunned, but it’s the Strib – we’ve come to expect this from them…
I have telecommuted and still do, but not full time because once the kids went to school the house just got TOO QUIET.
LL
June 4th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
The fact Eric Black would head out the door is as much a sign of the troubles at the Strib than anything else so far. (I may have to take to calling the Strib the “Strouble.”)
June 4th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
I never thought I was ignoring them. I had no place in the daily routine of meetings and planning sessions, so there wasn’t much point to being there unless I wanted to talk about doing something besides the column. I was also seated in a portion of the paper that didn’t quite encourage lots of bonhomie and banter. When I was in a pod with some friends a few years back, it was a delight to go to work and larf around, but that happy family was broken up when an editor – since gone – decided she wanted a window seat, and the 29,394th cubicle realignment went into effect.
Anyway, what was I supposed to do? Walk around and bother people who were working? Jeez.
June 4th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
What about hipster-in-residence Chris Remenschneider? He still has a job?
Who will let us know how those shows at First Avenue that he and a dozen other people watched went?
Who?
June 4th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
My boss wasn’t too taken by telecommuting until he noticed that the productivity of those working from home was higher than when in the office. We, being engineers, thought that came from humans being social creatures so we all need to blather and exchange niceties, rumors, etc., which takes time away from the job. You still do some of that telecommuting, but not as much. But telecommuting isn’t for all groups; we’ve had people who just couldn’t ever work with someone if they didn’t interact face to face, while there are folks I’ve “worked with” for 8 years who I’ve never seen.
Still the mindset that “if you’re not sitting in a cube, you’re not working” is something that you could certainly associate with a union drone.
June 4th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
That Jay Weiner isn’t the Jay Weiner who’s the son of Michael Weiner(aka Savage), is it?