It could be worse

Beacon Journal employees have faced the angst of staff reductions since Black Press bought the former Knight-Ridder newspaper in 2007 and BJ printer and Guild retirees have filed suit over benefits reductions, but it could be worse:

Thirty minutes after the sale of the 50,000 circulation Herald-Sun in Durham, North Carolina closed in January, new owners Paxton Media Group of Paducah, Kentucky fired president/publisher David Hughey, vice president/treasurer James Alexander, vice president of sales and marketing Toby Barfield and executive editor/vice president William Hawkins and escorted them from the building. Continuing the carnage, the new owners fired up to 25% of the newspaper’s more than 350 workers on the same day.

Shots were fired Thursday at the Sydney, Australia office of Epoch Times, a Chinese-language newspaper critical of China that supports Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, who charged that Falungong prisoners have been killed and their organs sold on the black market since 1999. Falungong, with Buddhist-inspired teachings, was banned by China in 1999.

The journalists and editors of Egypt’s Al–Dostour protested October’s firing of its editor-in-chief and founder Ibrahim Eissa by the new owners, whose new CEO Reda Edwards said the editorial policies will “lose the profits of the advertisements.”

Ruben Montoya, director of the state-run newspaper "El Telégrafo", was fired in March after he publicly opposed the creation of another state-run newspaper and said that the Ecuador government under Rafael Correa "manages the public media, but is not its owner." So was Mariuxi León, editor of the section "Diversidad," who defended Montoya’s stance in print.

A federal appeals panel in January declined to order fired Santa Barbara News-Press employees reinstated in an interim decision even though an administrative law judge said they were entitled to return with back pay. Final disposition of their case remains on appeal to the National Labor Relations Board in Washington. They charge they were fired in 2007 after they pushed for union representation.