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.
Categories: Lamenting · unemploying
Tagged: Chicago Tribune, How Journalism Survives, layoffs, Pink Slip Club, Pulitzer, reporter
I got unemployed. I’m a reporter, mostly for print publications, and I’m hardly alone given the immediate state of the economy (which I wrote extensively about in the last few months, in fact). I’m now adding to the numbers of unemployed workers in Illinois, which measured 6.4 percent in May, per the folks at IDES who track these things and dole out unemployment benefits. I have a college education, including a masters degree, I am accustomed to working unpredictable hours, and I never expected to find myself in this situation. And so it goes.
My friends are getting unemployed, too: One from a prominent Chicago-based bank, one from a Philadelphia firm of architects, others from newspapers. We’re mostly in our 30s, and we’re shaken to think about the mammoth task of figuring out what seem to be new economic rules that differ greatly from our parents.
I read lots about economics – I’ll read anything about debt, student loans, credit cards, mortgages – so at least I’m prepared with a skill set of living on the super cheap.
But it’s not good. Illinois is taking a bigger unemployment hit than the national average – 6.4 percent in May, compared with about 5.5 percent nationwide in May, and 5.4 percent statewide in April. A whole percentage point in a single month feels gigantic. Wish I could find statistics of journalists who find themselves out of work, too.
That and more to come right here, starting today, my termination date.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: reporter, unemployment
