The press workers union signed their new contract last week and they now work 40 hours for the same pay as their old 37.5 hours. There is one press run at night, starting at 11:40 pm. Sources say the crew shift times have changed as well, with the night crew starting at 10:00 pm and stopping at 6:00 am. The day crew starts at 5:45 am and stops at 1:45 pm. Press workers did not get a pay raisefor the life of the two-year contract and also lost 25% of their short term disabilty payments. As one pressman said, there are "not a lot of happy campers here" and added that "moral is at its lowest level in a long time."

Unfortunately, that's the case thoughout the company.

   Chicago Daily News press room 1903. Photo courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society.

I heard some news about further cutbacks at The Morning Call. HR has laid off or let go of six positions in the pressroom in the last year. Sources also say there is now only one press run at night instead of two, which they say limits production. If there's a problem with the press, a shutdown means the papers will be late getting to the street, leading to more subscribers canceling the paper, on and on, ad infinitum. It's a vicious cycle.

Just heard a few more rumors and updates for The Morning Call: plans to print the Easton-Express Times at TMC's 6th Street location fell through, and as a result, more layoffs are rumored for November, primarily in the pressroom. Plans to move pre-print operations to the Baltimore Sun have also fallen through. Press workers have managed so far to stave off layoffs, thanks to union negotiations, but it looks like that may soon change.

On the editorial front, the  Photo Department has been moved out of their private digs and into the near-deserted newsroom. Apparently, the reasoning was to make the newsroom look more full and to use "the cheeriness of photo to boost morale." To which a TMC staffer replied "Bullshit!" and explained that Publisher Tim Kennedy, who is moving into Ardith Hilliard's old office, wanted to use the photo lab to house his "BIG conference room table."

Being unemployed means you look for help paying your bills wherever you can. I had contacted Senator Casey's office to find out if I qualified for the government subsidy that would pay 65% of my COBRA health insurance premiums but unfortunately I missed the start date of September 1, 2008 by 13 days. I was laid off from The Morning Call on August 18, 2008. But the clerk did tell me that the cut-off date for the program has been extended from December 31 of 2008 until December 31 of this year. That's good news for all of you who were laid off from TMC in May. COBRA is notoriously expensive, so if you were laid off between September 1, 2008 and December 31, 2009, you will be eligible for the subsidy.

If you want to find out about the program you can call one of the following three Department of Labor numbers: 

Toll free: 1-866-444-3272

Washington, D.C.: 1-202-693-8700

Philadelphia office:  215-861-5300

You can also visit the Department of Labor Web site at: www.dol.gov/ebfa/COBRA

 Best of luck to all of you!

Today is the one-year anniversary of my last day at The Morning Call. I Think I can say, despite the uneasiness in the job market and my prospects thereof,that this has been one of the best years of my life. Being out from under the constant TMC drag of not ever being "good enough" has, in fact, been very good for me. I have literally blossomed and accomplished more in the last twelve months than I would ever have thought possible. I find, too, that I don't miss the job at all. I miss being out in the community and meeting all kinds of people from all walks of life, but I don't miss the job itself one bit.

So yes, Virginia, there is a very good life after The Morning Call. It's a sad thing to say, but there it is.

For those of us in the soon-to-be-defunct newspaper trade, here is an interesting (and unfortunately accurate) posting on the politics of the newsroom from a former copy editor at The Baltimore Sun. Enjoy!

http://johnemcintyre.blogspot.com/2009/08/patron-and-protege.html

Steve Budihas

Okay, I suppose some of you are wondering why I've been strangely silent about The Morning Call's Vice President of Human Resources Steve Budihas bailing out for greener pastures a couple of weeks ago. I may have been silent here on my blog, but believe me, I have certainly been celebrating in private. Doesn't it always figure, though, that the evil ones can fall in a vat of feces and climb out smelling like a rose? He presided over the firing of nearly half the staff of the Call, then when the paper is going under in that same vat, he walks away into a better job somewhere else. Somehow the justice of that escapes me.

But alas! The nemesis of the Allentown newspaper industry is gone. Let us be thankful. Hallelujah!

Unfortunately, it's almost too late to be encouraged by this wonderful news. The Call as it once was is also gone. There is no longer a newspaper in the Lehigh Valley. Most of the people who gave a shit about the paper are on the unemployment lines. I guess that's why I've been silent. It just all seems sort of anticlimactic, doesn't it?

I knew it was a bad omen for The Morning Call yesterday when I saw the expandable banner ad belonging to barrister Rick Orloski on top of the paper's Web site. Seems I was right. Many things are looming on the paper's homefront. With two big events coming up next week, the Tribune bankruptcy hearing in Delaware and the start of contract negotiations for the press room, workers in manufacturing are getting their share of upheavals at the local level.

Quality Control and Composing got the news Monday that Vice President of Operations Rick Molchany will be leaving the company on Friday, replaced by his Baltimore Sun counterpart Stephen G. Seidl, Senior Vice President, Operations and Technology. Seidl will be responsible "for manufacturing and circulation operations for Tribune media properties, The Morning Call and mcall.com." Seidl visited the Call on Tuesday. No word whether Molchany's departure is voluntary or not, but insiders say it is not, adding that Molchany was the biggest advocate for keeping the paper local. The Sun and TMC's daily operations will now be under one veep, Seidl. 

Another blow to manufacturing came yesterday in the departure of Tim Frankenfield, Manager of Quality Assurance. Frankenfield told employees his job had been "eliminated" as he left yesterday afternoon. So who's left in charge of Quality Control and Composing? Manufacturing Director Paul Lynch will be the local liaison between the two papers. Composing room workers are devastated by the changes as they see more layoffs looming in the distance. "Everybody is just scared for their jobs," one worker said. "We're all young, we're not ready to retire yet. We're all scared."

The movement of operations control to Baltimore follows the plan from Tribune-on-High to regionalize manufacturing between the two papers. Even TMC Publisher Tim Kennedy must answer to the Sun's Publisher and CEO Timothy E. Ryan. The Sun is currently beefing up its packaging area to begin printing and inserting for the preprint sections of The Morning Call. Meanwhile, TMC is changing its page depth format from 21 inches to 21.65 inches, the Tribune standard size used at the Sun. Most of the Call is now laid out in "modules" which are made up by Tribune. Ads have to fit in these modules, so advertisers no longer have the choice to place their ad with a certain story running in the paper. A module comes in as a half page or quarter page and the ads are squared off to fit the holes.  

Pressmen can expect a fight when contract negotiations begin next week.  The Sunday night run for Monday's paper uses only one of the two presses. Likewise Monday night's run for the Tuesday paper, and they no longer edition ads for those two papers, meaning less workers are needed to handle the single pressrun. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are the only days ads can be placed in one of four editions. Editorial content, however, is now only one edition for the entire week. So what does all this mean? It means that less workers will be needed in the pressroom, especially if the preprint sections are moved to Baltimore.

Hold on to your hats, guys, it could get ugly.

One of the things that I really miss about being a newspaper photographer is the camaraderie between journalists at big news events. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Philadelphia and New York personalities, and actually having them talk to you as an equal, was one of the best job perks. It sure helped pass the time when we all had to wait several hours together in the the State Police parking lot for a perp walk that would take all of seven seconds to shoot.

That's not to say that the camaraderie with local journalists was not equally fun. There was nothing better than getting to a spot news scene and finding someone cool from the competing media like Bruce Winter or Bill Crumlic to chat with and get caught up on their lives. I guess we should have been more competitive with each other since we were all out to get our photos on the Web before the other guy, but I've learned over the years that you can get more information at the scene by being friendly to the competition than by acting all snooty and pushing your way in front of them.

When our jobs demanded that we shoot video as well as stills, the stakes got even higher. Now we were competing with the television guys, too. Nothing was more humbling than showing up at a news scene with my 8-inch Sony videocam—dwarfed as it was on a massive, sturdy tripod—and having to stand next to videographers with real TV news cameras, the big studio cams with shoulder mounts and external microphones and lenses that you could actually change the aperature on. It certainly brought me back down to earth in a hurry.

And then, of course, there was the bad side of news reporting, like having to slog up a half-mile hill with 20 pounds of camera gear on my back to get to a fire or accident scene only to be stopped by the local fire police because it's a fatal and the coroner's out of town and no, you can't go any further. Believe it or not, there were actually times when even I couldn't charm my way onto the field.

Working on a story with your own really cool Morning Call reporter always made for a great time. I loved to hang at the projects with Will "Dimples" Ford or drive an hour to the Poconos with Tom Coombe and talk about everything under the sun. And if I stop to think of how much I have learned from photographers like Fran Kittek and Pete Shaheen it makes the cruel reality of corporate downsizing amazingly clear. When a company (like Tribune) deliberately loses its' seasoned talent it is like cutting off their right hand to spite the left. Like Pete always said, the inmates are running the asylum. But don't worry, I'm not going to get up on my soapbox again. I just wanted to give a nod to all my creative and hardworking journalistic colleagues who have recently found themselves on the wrong side of a beancounter's list. Let's go take them out to lunch.