Idaho Business Review IBR
The Idaho Statesman has laid off nine employees, including seven reporters and other newsroom staff members, journalists at the paper said.
The staff was called to a meeting in the newsroom at 4 p.m. Aug. 15 by Vicki Gowler, the paper’s editor and vice president.
“It was, basically, ‘We thought we were in better shape than we are,’” said one reporter who attended the meeting and was not laid off. Sources for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Among those who lost their jobs, sources said, were reporters Joe Estrella and Anna Webb, senior designer Tim Jones, online production editor Sara Cassinelli and copy editors Randall Post and Joi Topete.
Sources said a part-time copy editor, an information-technology employee and a production staff member also were laid off.
Another newsroom employee who edited magazines for the paper will be reduced to part-time, a photographer will assume some design responsibilities and the associate editorial page editor will take on some reporting duties, sources said. An open sports reporter/editor spot will not be filled, and newsroom employees will be required to take a one-week furlough by year’s end, meeting attendees said.
Employees who lost their jobs were invited to remain at work for the next two weeks, sources said.
Earlier rounds of cuts at the paper – two in 2008 and one in 2009 – reduced staff sizes in other departments. The McClatchy Company owns the Idaho Statesman.
The newsroom employs about 50 reporters, photographers, copy editors and support staff members.
A reporter who was not let go said, “We’re down about 40 percent across the building.”
Calls seeking comments from Gowler and from Risa McGrew, the paper’s human resources director, were not returned. A call to Mike Jung, who will start as the Statesman’s president and publisher Aug. 22, was not returned. Jung is publisher of the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
I only hope Katy moller was the first to go!
mic13, I’m assuming you must be one of the real estate types that didn’t like that Joe was writing stories that actually told the truth about what was going on in the market. He took a lot of heat for his coverage by the builders, real estate agents, banks and mortgage companies who were so caught up in their own fantasy that they truly believed the housing boom would never end. It’s been obvious for years to anyone who had the common sense to take a closer look at what was going on that we have been overbuilding and the whole industry was just one giant house of cards, which we see now is crumbling. I guess now with Joe gone we can let the industry try to to sell us on their fantasy by telling us that things aren’t as bad as they look, and we are well on our way to recovery. But I have to tell you that the $100,000 difference between my mortgage bill and my current assessment says otherwise.
I think it was unnecessary to include individual names of those who were let go, except for those who appear regularly in bylines that the reader may be familiar with (under the public figure notion). To name some reporters and not others (at least one other wasn’t named), while including copy editors and designers, without a quote from these people seems strange to me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a business story about a layoff at another company, such as Micron, that ever names those laid off so specifically and yet so incompletely. These are all very hard-working, wonderful people who have endured so much for so long for so little that they are more than qualified to work in this business anymore anyway. If anybody is looking for excellent, tested editors, designers and writers, best get to them now.
Joe Estrella was an easy choice. He faked his way through a series of articles about the housing industry over the past few years. You’d think a guy who wrote more than one article on the same topic would actually spend some time figuring out what he was writing about. I can see faking it one time to meet a deadline..but come on, after a few articles get yourself educated on the nuiances of the definitions, statistics, trends, and the differences between new construction and resales in the housing sector.
Not surprising. For many years these guys have turned a blind eye to what passes for good economic governance in Idaho. They have routinely swallowed whole-hog the notion that Idaho had “leaders” that “understood business”, and were very visionary, accomplished people. What rot-gut, pantywaist journalism, completely disconnected from reality.
Add to this a corporate owner that got thrown under the toxic debt bus by Wall Street bankers pandering to their California-sized egos. Now Idaho winds up with the worst possible media of all worlds: no locally-owned outlets that truly care enough about the state’s future to call bulls**t on the rural & agri-biz bozos that run things. Hey, it’s a genuine “culture of obedience”.