Mercury News Tragedy

The Mercury News reports today on the suspected suicide of a beloved editor, Rich Ramirez who was found dead Wednesday morning. A longtime colleague of his told me that "he was a wonderful human being, endlessly helpful who gave his entire life to journalism." People are devastated at the Merc where grief counselors were on hand and an impromptu memorial took place.

I wouldn't know what drove a great person like him to take his life, but it couldn't have helped that the Merc is in the throes of yet another round of layoffs about to be announced. On Wednesday, there was a full staff meeting in which new management announced that the number of layoffs would be forty. Nobody is to come to work on July 2nd. Those who are to be axed will receive a call at home. The goal is to get down to 200 employees on a staff that numbered 350 a few years ago. Mr. Ramirez had been told privately that his position as assistant to the Executive Editor would be eliminated but that he could transfer back to the newsroom.

For the rest of the news staff, there is some relief that the layoff number is forty, when many had expected sixty, but the layoffs hang over everyone's head like a "game" of Russian Roulette. It's not a good time to be looking for work in the shrinking newspaper industry.

Condolences to the Ramirez family in their time of devastating loss. Best wishes to the entire Mercury News staff with the hope that they are given the encouragement and space to grieve and share the myriad feelings they must be going through - rocked by grief, shock, and personal angst.

Newspaper Layoffs: The Daily Planet is Melting

Are our Bay Area daily newspapers grinding to a halt the same way that arctic glaciers are melting just out of our sight?

I had breakfast with a friend who reports for the San Jose Mercury News and he said that they are bracing for a 25% reduction in their 250 person news team. Last October they negotiated a temporary reprieve from any layoffs and as of July the pink slips can start tumbling off the printing press. Time flies when you're running around investigating and writing stories to inform the public.

Three weeks ago at the San Francisco Chronicle, they announced a similar 25% reduction that has already begun. Both papers have closed down their Peninsula Bureaus (tho the Chronicle did it a few years ago). John Curley, a Chronicle editor who spent 25 years there and is a sophisticated Web 2.0 guy, was one of the ones who was pushed out. You'd think they'd be promoting the folks who can blaze the path for the paper to prosper with web services.

It's unclear whether any execs at these papers have a plan other than the tried and true corporate cost cutting scenario of recent decades. (I've never understood how mass layoffs actually work in any industry assuming that most employees were working hard at something the company produces to stay competitive.) At a newspaper, will it translate into something like The Weekly Reader, that we got in grade school? Will the Merc and Chron end up merging somewhere down the line into a regional McNewspaper? Who's going to want to major in journalism anymore, let alone practice it? What am I going to put under my cereal bowl that simultaneously keeps me informed, entertained, and out of trouble for making a mess on the table?

John McManus seems to have an inside track on these events in his blog at Grade the News.

photo credit: dickie at flickr.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/simplethingsuask/42917792/