How the Houston Chron is restructuring news coverage

The Houston Press blog has a comment on it that purports to be a copy of a memo about how the Houston Chronicle has re-arranged itself after its recent layoffs. A few highlights:

* Story lengths. Reporters and assigning editors will agree on target lengths for every story and include them on the budget. Because we continue to be respectful of our readers’ time, anything longer than 15 inches needs to be discussed with the lead editor for the section.

* Suggested headlines. Reporters need to provide a suggested headline in the Web headline field in DTI. This can serve as a Web headline and be considered when the print headline is written. Reporters should also write a summary in the Web summary field that will appear online. The Web summary is a short recap of the story, typically the lead or nut graph.

* Subject matter experts will focus on their areas of expertise, but everyone on the copy desk will work across multiple sections. An editor, for example, may lay out and edit the Television page inside Star and then work on the Newsmakers page inside A.

A reader suggests that internal Belo finances may not make sense

If I get it, I think this reader is saying that some ad sellers are double-dipping commissions for online ads, which is a needless hit to the company bottom line. Can someone explain this?

If ad rep A sells an ad, they get 100 percent commission. but they are being allowed to pay ad rep B 100 percent commission on the same ad. Given that these online ads make no where near what the ads for the paper makes, this seems like highway robbery and an insult to the rest of us who have been hit with having to pay for our blackberries, parking fees, cuts in 401k contributions, salary cuts, etc. etc. etc.

Is this true? Given how little those ads are worth, compared with print, I can't see how even double dipping would be much of a hit.

Can anybody sign onto the Belo extranet from home?

Several commenters cannot. Neither can I. As has been noted on this blog elsewhere, technology is not Belo's strong suit, so I'm not taking anything as an omen. I'm getting an error code that says:

extranet.belo.com uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate expired on 4/4/09 6:59 PM.

(Error code: sec_error_expired_certificate)

Looks like the tech champions at IBM missed a deadline. Imagine that.

Stronger indications that it's coming Tuesday

A comment on an earlier post says:

Security says the layoffs will start Tuesday, April 7. The hit list includes a lot of managers. Let's hope they lay off fewer workers. Who needs, in one department, a director, two assistant directors and several managers. My manager is either getting the axe or he is just plain lying that he has heard nothing. I hope he has to go through the pain of losing a job.

If this tip is real, it seems like a good source. Security will need to know what the day is so they can prepare.

An aside: I wish pain on nobody. There is a third alternative: That manager actually doesn't know yet. It may be that the word will not be given to the lower manager levels until Monday. That might explain why the cuts themselves don't happen until Tuesday.

Managers are in the same mess as the rest of us. If the earlier discussions are true, they face significant losses this time. Plenty of pain to go around.

UPDATE: Here's another comment that confirms Tuesday:

My supervisor told me Tuesday, too. I only found out because I was planning to be off that day, but not anymore.

Two more indications that it's coming soon

Readers confirm that managers had firing school meeting today. And I'm told that two offices in the fourth floor hallway have had their windows papered over for "privacy."

Those offices have been used in the past for delivering the news.
Windows were papered over then, too.

Technical issue: Posting anonymous comments

It has come to my attention that the anti-spam captcha system is hiccuping. Others say that if you try to post a comment as "anonymous" the system rejects the first time to fill in the captcha with an error message that says to try again. The second try works. I've just tried it and found that to be the case. I am not nearly knowledgeable about the technology to know why this is happening or to fix it. It looks like many of you figured this out or are not having the problem, given the number of comments. But if you do get the error message, try again.

Was there a 'firing school' this morning?

One comment from yesterday said there was to be a manager-only meeting today that would lay out the script for the process. Can anyone confirm that it happened?

Another preparation suggestion to consider as we wait

A reader suggests:

One more thing to put on your to-do list:
Go to any supervisor you trust and ask for a PRINTED letter of recommendation. Today. Do it now.

To which I'll add: If you're on LinkedIn, this might be a good day to ask for recommendations there, too.

Shooting down rumor about Friday

A reader writes that a high level editor says the layoffs will not
happen Friday. For what it's worth.

Useful info on COBRA

A former DMN-er writes:

The economic recovery act passed earlier this year provides COBRA premium assistance for laid-off workers.

Here's a link where folks can find out if it makes sense for them:
http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/cobra.html