Guild ad in Star-Trib salutes those who lost jobs

A New York Times item sent to us by Charles Buffum is headlined "A Newseoom'a Salute to Its Depaerted."  It tells aboutl the uunusual ad placed in the Minneaplois Star Tribune by the Newspaper Guild to salute employees who lost their job in a wave of staff cuts.  Here is the article:

Newspapers occasionally publish ads congratulating themselves for various achievements. But a most unusual ad appeared last week in The Star Tribune of Minneapolis with a less upbeat message, honoring - and naming - newsroom employees who had left the newspaper in wave after wave of staff cuts.

The ad was conceived, designed and paid for by the colleagues they had left behind, who still put out the paper.

The Star Tribune has endured more than its share of turmoil, changing hands twice since 2006 - the second time after emerging from bankruptcy. A publisher was forced out in 2007 over accusations of unethical. Busmess practices, amid a lawsuit that cost the paper millions. Layoffs and buyouts cut the number of employees in half in the span of a few years. The newsroom contracted to about 250 people from about 400. The employees who remain have absorbed pay and benefit cuts.

The latest staff cut prompted a byline strike, in which reporters withheld their names from articles, late last month, organized by the Newspaper Guild.

Mary Abbe, an arts critic, said it was around that time thar.she had the idea for the ad.

"I just thought, ‘What can we do that is a gesture of support for these people?'" she said. "A byline strike is kind of an internal concept that doesn't really mean anything to our readers."

Jane Friedmann, a reporter and researcher, designed the ad, whiclh noted the departure of many people andi said, "We thank especially the more.than 140 newsroom employees who have left the paper in the past three years," followed by a list of names.

Employees took up a collection to cover the $3,225 cost of placing the ad. "Not everybody participateq,'. Ms. Abbe said. "There were people who didn’t want to give money back to the company.”


David Brauer, who writes ,on local media for the Web site Minnpost,.com, called it "feeding the hand that bites you."

But the ad does not criticize .the Star Tribune's management or ownership, past or present, and the paper did not take issue with it.

 "We know that the economic circumsdtances are frankly awful, so the issue. was not to slap the company,” Ms. Abbe said. “We want the company to succeed.”
~ RICHARD PEREZ-PENZA