The still-slumping economy appears to be giving Dean Singleton a free pass to continue slicing away at his newspapers. As if employees in his already decimeted newsrooms aren’t scraping by as is, Singleton’s MediaNews is now requiring all of its non-union workers to take a one-week furlough starting this month. The company has also negotiated an involuntary furlough with its unions, in exchange for fast-tracking a contract by Feb. 27. Forever playing hard-ball, the company refused an explicit no-layoff proposal offered by the Guild on Friday, according to a union bulletin. The Guild committee members made it clear that the furloughs are a one-time concession and its unlikely to be agreed to again. David Rounds, President and Publisher for Bay Area News Group-East Bay, fired off an email to employees on Jan. 28, explaining that while the forced time off was an alternative to layoffs, he couldn’t promise it would save the company enough money to prevent future firings. The best he could offer? “I am hopeful that an unpaid furlough will go a long way toward keeping future layoffs, if any, to a minimum.”
San Jose Inside
San Jose Inside (https://www.sanjoseinside.com)
The Mercury News is fundamentally a pirate ship full of persons opposing a slur-free society, dedicated to dividing the demographic groups in San Jose, full of pretension, and quite largely as loathsome as the subject of the sugar-puff cover-up they did on Victor Ajlouny on 1/31/09.
I cannot understand how anyone could sympathize with them on any issue, including their own downward spiral. I find it refreshing and uplifting.
I imagine a West Coast tabloid will eventually replace all the wretched papers from the Los Angeles Times to the San Francisco Chronicle. It’ll probably be something like the Enquirer so it won’t have too much distance to navigate in the dirty water of the dominant media culture.
Pray for the end of the Merc now, and certainly sooner than later. God bless Dean Singleton. His by-word appears to be “humiliate them, then fire them” with which philosophy all decent San Joseans can agree.
I’m not sure what a decimeted newsroom is. Perhaps if the newsroom hadn’t been decimated, one of the editors could tell us.
1- Well stated!!! The Merc is paying the price for the toll road it has taken for many years. This downward spiral IS refreshing and, in fact, justice. And unlike they would like us to believe, it is NOT because most news is now read online. Nothing can replace a crisp Sunday paper. Sadly when that paper is the Merc, Chronicle, Times, etc,…the best place for that paper, even on a Sunday, is the bottom of the birdcage…