February 18, 2004
Layoffs At The 'Tribune'
Silly us. We should have reported this last week, when those of us on the Portland Tribune "color commentary" panel were informed that Dave Kern, who had established the panel, had been one of the victims of that paper's downsizing of its news staff (although the panel itself will continue).
We are reminded of this development by a post at Worldwide Pablo this evening:
WWP has learned that this means that just about one-fourth of the "editorial and writing staff" are now gone, all given pink slips at last week's end. No word on whether other departments are affected, but some of the names to be eliminated are familiar. And likewise, no word yet though whether the lay-offs affect any of the "marquee" names on the Trib's diamond-plated masthead. Time will tell.
WWP points out that the layoffs were reported last Friday (the same day the "color commentary" panel found out) by The Oregonian.
This is not an especially good sign, we would think, and we don't particularly relish the potential prospect of the Tribune vanishing from the local media scene. As much as I abhor it's tendency to front-page asinine stories about Portland's local basketball team, and as much as I enjoy the occassional poke at Phil Stanford getting facts wrong, the last thing local media needs is to go back to the days of being a single newspaper town.
Basically, we don't have anything more insightful than what WWP has to say about all of this: "This is a sorry turn for the struggling but estimable Trib, and an even worse turn for Portland's media-starved and media-strangled populace."
Comments (2)
brett on 18 Feb 2004
I would be sorry to see the Trib go as well. I would not, however, miss headlines such as "Porn, handcuffs found in UP suspect's home".
alan on 18 Feb 2004
My colleague said, "Porn, handcuffs? I have one of those at home and I'm not telling which one."