The Plain Dealer posted a story on contract negotiations between the paper and the newsroom union. Under the new agreement, 58 journalists will lose their jobs next year.
When it comes the Plain Dealer’s future, everyone has something to say – except the newspaper.
Finally, the Plain Dealer talked back late Tuesday night when a story announcing the terms of the agreement appeared on cleveland.com.
The article confirms news reported throughout the nation. Fifty-eight journalists, about one-third the newsroom, will lose their jobs next spring. In a major change, the newspaper will contain content from the website, cleveland.com. The non-union site runs independently from the paper.
The story did not answer the biggest question: will the Plain Dealer still publish seven days a week? Several sister publications, such as the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and the Post-Standard in Syracuse, have or will publish three times a week. Advance Publications, the newspapers’ parent company, adopted the strategy in its transition online.
But the Plain Dealer’s fate remains unsettled, according to outgoing publisher Terry Egger.
” ‘At this point, candidly, we will begin in earnest a more full planning process,’ ” he said in the story. ” ‘We’ve seen what happened in other [Advance] markets…I would say in the next two or three months we should know.’ ”
Egger steps down at the end of the year. His successor hasn’t been announced.
The guild launched the “Save the Plain Dealer” campaign to maintain the newspaper’s present publication schedule. Their efforts brought the newspaper national attention.
Early comments on the story on the cleveland.com, however, didn’t give the union much credit or sympathy.
“Your union won’t save you. It will only hurt you. The PD will go the way of the Twinkie. Not all the unions (sic) fault, but they sure don’t help!” wrote Cosmo392.
Tumbledropper wrote, “The guild is headed by a pathetic group of leaders looking to save their own jobs. For (the guild’s executive secretary) to say the group did the best they could is perjury.”
Watching folks in and out of the media weigh in, here and elsewhere, about this issue. Worried that those w/o $$$ who might be able to read a sports page that’s been left behind at a restaurant won’t be able to read it’s virtual counterpart. I’ll bet that 80% of the readers of this blog have wifi; I’ll
also bet that the % of Clevendlers w/o Internet access is much, much lower than that. Cleveland.com’s gonna reach fewer local people than the PD does. (Key word in that sentence, local.). That’s an hypothesis. Is there data that trumps it?
You’ve raised an interesting point. I’m approving this comment, but please subscribe if you haven’t done so already. I’m going to address your questions shortly, after I’ve done some more reporting.