RE: DMN

A DMN-working FBvian says still more editors are looking for work:

At least two more high-ranking editors are job hunting, in addition to the Star-Tribune threesome. Factor in the departures the last few months of the business editor and the graphic design editor, and you have about half of the leadership team that was in place to start the year looking to leave or having already left. If these newsroom managers have such little confidence in the future, what should everyone else think?

Indeed. Rod and I wonder if any long-term investigative projects are now put off until, oh, say, mid-September.

RE: DMN

Just another anecdote about how bad things are over there: I am told that three high-level editors all applied for the same job at the Star-Tribune. None of them knew the other was applying–and neither, obviously, did the folks in the newsroom. That is, until certain documents coming over a shared fax machine revealed to everyone involved, editors and newsroom alike, how eager at least three senior-level people are to jump ship.

RE: DMN

One FBvian deep within the paper brings more details of layoffs.

As a follow-up to Rod’s posting, those sequestered editors are scheduled to finish their blueprint for the brand-new Dallas Morning News by this Friday. Then a second group of editors–the publisher, editor, managing editor and editorial page editor–get until the following Wednesday, Aug. 9, to ruminate over it before sending it to Robert Decherd, the Belo chairman.

Apparently, buyout details are included in this planning, and that’s why Jim Moroney told the staff that those details would become known on that week.

You think the staff is neurotic and distracted now? Just wait until after Aug. 9.

If nothing else, this post proves it’s tough to sequester anyone in the news business and expect him/her to remain silent on why he/she is being sequestered.

Update: Another DMN-er says, um, our scoop isn’t a scoop at the paper:

We all got Official E-mails a couple of weeks ago telling us who would be on the committee, what they’d be doing, why they would be sequestered and who they’d report to…Plenty of tension here, but not because we don’t know about the process.