-By Warner Todd Huston
The Cleveland Plain Dealer is one of Ohio’s biggest papers but neither size nor influence is likely to save the jobs of one third of the paper’s newsroom employees who are preparing for big cuts to hit as the new year begins.
Workers at the paper found out on Wednesday that 58 employees would likely be losing their jobs starting in 2013. That is one-third of the workforce Harlan Spector of the Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild reported.
Some of those members may be offered jobs at the Internet division for Cleveland.com, but most will be laid off starting in February when their current union contract runs out.
This is the next blow to Plain Dealer employees when last month workers began to fear that the publishing schedule of the paper would be cut to three days a week. The corporation that owns the Dealer also owns other papers where publishing schedules have been similarly cut down.
Plain Dealer Publisher Terry Egger gave Cleveland’s NewsChannel5 a statement:
“We are currently in discussions with the Newspaper Guild about a possible long-term extension of the current contract and various other issues. While it is our longstanding policy not to comment publicly on specifics while we are in negotiations, we are hopeful of reaching an agreement with the bargaining unit in the near future.”
Naturally the union is trying to get ahead of any changes by “mobilizing,” but it won’t likely do them much good in the long run. The Plain Dealer will just become the latest statistic in a failing industry.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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