Pink Slip Club: Even a Pulitzer can’t guarantee a reporting job

From The Reader’s Michael Miner in a post here:

On Wednesday the Tribune’s editor, Gerould Kern, and associate managing editor for national news Joycelyn Winnecke dropped in on the Washington bureau and laid (John) Crewdson off. They also laid off national correspondents Bay Fang and Stephen Hedges, national security correspondent Aamer Madhani, and, I’m told, a fifth Washington staffer who worked part-time.

At the same time, I hear, eight Washington staffers from the Los Angeles Times lost their jobs too.

As Chicago’s own Barack Obama prepares to move into the White House, Tribune journalistic talent is in increasingly short supply in Washington. Bureau chief Michael Tackett resigned last summer, and acting chief Naftali Bendavid quit the other day and is heading to the Wall Street Journal. Last week the Tribune Company appointedCissy Baker vice president of a consolidated Washington bureau serving the Tribune,the LA Times, and the rest of the company’s newspaper, broadcasting, and new media operations. Since 2003 she’d been a vice president of Tribune Broadcasting.

Crewdson won a Pulitzer in 1981 for his reporting while at The New York Times on illegal immigration. Hurry up and read his DC stuff for the Tribune here before they take it down.

Public Enemy hates chronic unemployment, too

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Public Enemy played the Pitchfork Music Festival here Friday night, on the 20th anniversary of their album, It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. In keeping with Learning New Skills, I wedged myself up front to shoot pictures of the live show, images I hope are decent. If anyone hates keeping the people down, it’s Chuck D; if anyone supports taking on multiple jobs at once, it’s totally Flavor Flav.

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Guerrilla warfare takes to the Trees

Fighting back in this market – where America needs watchdogging reporters but hasn’t figured out how to pay for them – is something I’ve been thinking a lot about. Based on my own experience with corporate-owned media, I’m not too excited about hopping back onto any company that has more HR structure than reporters. Period. You’ve read about my plans and efforts to learn new skills; turns out some smarty guy with more experience than me is also trying to figure out how journalism survives corporate ownership and a transition from print to something else. It’s called the Treehouse Media Project, started by a guy with enough Philadelphia connex to inspire me, Rich Heidorn Jr.

Phase One of the TreeHouse Media Project will provide multimedia and entrepreneurial training. Together we will learn new ways to tell our stories and share best practices on revenue models that will support our work. We may collaborate on joint ventures. We will support our colleagues by telling our readers about the good work they are doing.

Current plans call for instruction in:

Multimedia & Technology

• Blogs & RSS feeds
• Video (reporting for the camera, shooting, editing, uploading to the web)
• Podcasting
• Web design
• Database design and deployment

Business and Marketing

• E-Commerce (shopping carts; marketing/advertising etc.)
• Marketing and advertising (e.g. Search engine optimization)
• Writing a business plan
• Legal issues: copyrights, fair use, choosing the right business structure, etc.)
• Creating revenue streams: a platform for book sales and speaking engagements; advertising; subscriptions; merchandise sales, etc.
• Finances / Accounting
• Sales (e.g. advertising)

Weekend seminars this fall in Philadelphia (where I have parents); You know I already signed up.