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.

Job losses looming

Mayor Daley said Wednesday he’s been warned by a parade of corporate CEOs that a blizzard of job cuts are about to bury the souring Chicago economy.

“Huge layoffs are coming in November and December. And next year, there’s going to be [even more] huge layoffs. All the corporation CEOs have come in to tell me. That’s just the beginning. It’s not their end result,” Daley told reporters after a City Council meeting.

Read the rest here in the Sun Times.

Ugh.

Pink Slip Club California

And in California:

State workers get work hours cut in half, others laid off in state budget mess

Story Updated: Aug 2, 2008

By Jose Gaspar

Denis Monsibais is an Examiner at the Bakersfield Department of Motor Vehicle office where she has worked for 19 years. Friday she and 8 other co-workers were sent home early after having worked half a day.

“I never thought it would come to this. We always got threats and this one really did come through,” said the mother of two.

Numerous state workers throughout Kern County have either been laid off or had their work hours reduced as a result of an Executive Order by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Statewide more than 10,000 part-time and seasonal workers lost their jobs. An additional 200,000 could have their pay cut to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour with full salary reimbursed once a budget is signed.

Schwarzenegger said the move was necessary because legislators have failed to approve a state budget and the state needs to build up sufficient cash reserves to avoid a cash crisis in September.

But state workers question why they should be the ones to bear the brunt of the budget crisis.

Here’s the rest.