NEWSPAPER GUILD PROTESTS CUTS AT THE BALTIMORE SUN

Friday, July 25, 2008

(PAI)NEWSPAPER GUILD PROTESTS CUTS AT THE BALTIMORE SUN

            BALTIMORE (PAI)--Waving signs that said, among other things, “Sell Zell!”, more than 100 members of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild protested cuts engineered by new Baltimore Sun owner Sam Zell. Their July 17 rally occurred a day before the latest round of buyouts and layoffs took effect there.

            The latest cuts saw 53 people leave, mostly from the newsroom staff.   Three rounds of cuts and buyouts in the last 18 months have been so large that even Guild President Bill Salganik, a business writer, took a prior buyout. The cuts not only cost workers jobs but also cost the newspaper quality, the demonstrators added.

            Zell, a wealthy Chicago real estate mogul, has instituted cuts at The Tribune Co., the entire chain of papers he bought last December. Other deep cuts have come at other Tribune papers, including its flagship Chicago Tribune, Newsday of Long Island and the Los Angeles Times. Zell bought the corporation, in what was technically an employee stock-option plan deal--but really wasn’t--for billions of dollars.

            The cuts are so deep chain-wide that one editor of the Times was fired for refusing to go along with them. His successor editor resigned in protest. So did the editor of the Tribune. She was replaced by a more-pliable corporate insider who had been sidetracked.

            And Zell has shrunk the number of news pages in Los Angeles, while ordering a redesign of the Sun, shrinkage of its non-Baltimore news and reduction in page sizes. He plans a graphics-oriented makeover of the Tribune, too.

            All this resonated with the protesting Sun workers and Guild members, who want to let Baltimoreans know their newspaper is going downhill.

            Guild members arranged 100 black folding chairs on the sidewalk in front of the paper with pink slips affixed to the seats. The chairs represent each employee fired or bought out the next day or who were bought out or fired in the two prior rounds of cuts, this past March and last June. Those cuts axed 45 people.

            The Sun's work force represented by the Guild has shrunk by about 50% through buyouts, layoffs and departures since Tribune took over in 2000. Turnover in the advertising department has been close to 100%.



            "Tribune's thoughtless strategy not only means suffering for Baltimore Sun employees, but a much-diminished newspaper for loyal readers," said WBNG Executive Director Cet Parks. "Tribune's dangerous business strategy has buried the paper and

the company under a crushing $12 billion debt load and now employees and readers are paying a painful price. We need an owner who cares about Baltimore, its readers and Sun employees.”   WBNG, after the cuts, represents 400 Sun workers.



            “Fewer journalists employed by The Sun means less scrutiny of Baltimore

government and less accountability of our elected officials and self-proclaimed leaders,” said Tanika White, WBNG co-chair at the Sun and a reporter there for nine years.

            “Fewer Investigative reporters mean fewer probes into our city’s ground rent problems, nursing home failures, and the war on crime and drugs. This is a sad day for us, but a sadder day for Baltimore . A community without a quality newspaper is a community without eyes. Shame on Tribune and Zell for leaving Baltimore in the dark.”



            “The problems in the newspaper industry are real, but cuts won’t solve them,” said Salganik. “Tribune has been cutting employees from the newspaper’s payroll for years, and the end result has been declining revenue. When house sales are slow, a builder will throw in hardwood floors instead of carpet. But the builder won’t expect to sell the house by raising the price and junking the carpet for bare concrete. A smart

business attracts customers by offering more, not less.”

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