Coup de Grace on a Grim Day at the Strib

One by one Strib reporters have been summoned in to a private meeting today with top Strib editors and told what their fate will be — reassignment, opportunity to reapply for current position, opportunity to apply for reassignment, etc. By reports describing post-interview expressions from “glum” to “despondent” to out-right tears, few Strib writers apparently saw “fresh and exciting opportunities in the challenging, fast-paced journalism world of tomorrow”, or whatever corporate-speak nonsense Team Par is selling today.

Among the more startling “reassignments”. TV critic Neal Justin will be given the opportunity to “compete” with Deborah Rybak for a job reporting on TV. Not a column. Straight reporting. Who got hired. Who got fired and the ratings.

Rybak has been on part-time status for several months, dealing with the death of her father and her mother’s Alzheimers. As of Monday evening no one from Strib management had contacted her about these changes.

Linda Mack will be reassigned away from covering architecture.

Recent hire Sara Glassman has been told her fashion beat is probably gone, but that may be re-thought when/if the paper hires a new assistant managing editor for features.

The Strib will continue with both of its present music critics, theater critics and movie critics.

But one atrocity has galvanized the glum and despondent more than most of the others. That would be the announcement that Ridder and Avista have summarily fired the half dozen people manning the company’s telephone switchboards. Most of this crowd are “sweet old ladies”, (one has been with the Strib for 40 years), who, in addition to being way too nice for pissed-off readers to stay surly with, stocked a jar of Tootsie Rolls and gum for the staff to grab as they passed back and forth.

The new plan is apparently for a computer-operated system, although there are a lot of black jokes about Avista out-sourcing the switchboard to Bangalore.

Looking at it another way though, as Nick Coleman put it, “When people call in to cancel their subscription over something that asshole Coleman wrote, there won’t be anyone there to take the call.”