The Long Beach Press-Telegram, whose history extends back to 1897, is reportedly eliminating its sports, photo and features departments.
In Long Beach, anyway.
Some members of those departments will be swallowed up by the Torrance Daily Breeze, which shares news the P-T and other MediaNews Group papers.
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Blogger Gary Scott, a SoCal newspaper veteran and supervising producer of Warren Olney's Which Way, LA?, gets the scoop. The bullet points, according to Scott's sources and later confirmed in a Long Beach Post, uh, post:
- Five photographers, six sports writers and columnists, and
three features department employees are being terminated and allowed to reapply for jobs at the Breeze.
- Not all will get hired because the Breeze will have one fewer photographer, two fewer sports slots and, apparently,
no features openings.
So at least two sports writers, a features writer and a photographer will
lose their jobs.
- The Breeze will hire a news editor, a
presentation editor and create two new city reporter positions.
- The P-T's executive city editor John Futch and day city editor Rose Fitzpatrick were let go. (Guys, see above for a couple openings.)
Kristopher Hanson, a
steward for the Southern California
Media Guild Local 9400 that represents P-T staffers, reportedly characterized the moves as a MediaNews attempt to bust the union. MediaNews' Breeze is not a union shop.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.