Post farewell messages here

If anyone leaving wants to post a farewell, let's leave the comments
on this post for that. Sympathetc comments of support can go on other posts. Let's leave this one for those who got cut.

Frank Trejo has posted a comment.

Noli nothis permittere te terere

Or if you prefer: Illegitimi non carborundum.
Either way, here we are. D Day.

Repeating the rules of the day:

1) If you are laid off and want to let people know, give contact information and/or give a parting message, send me an e-mail -- dmncuts(at)gmail(dot)com -- and I'll get it posted. Or you can post a comment here with the information. I'll try to get those kinds of comments aggregated onto their own post as the day goes on. The same applies for tomorrow and the next several days, as people recover from shock and decide they want to be public. During previous layoffs, a few people got job offers because they made their situation public, if that helps.

2) Do not post a name in the comments as having been laid off unless it is you. Do not launch a personal attack on any person. This blog will have no collateral damage if I can help it. I realize that will make it less newsy and interesting to read. I can live with that. What do you want for nothing? A rubber biscuit?

3) Those of you keeping lists, if you want to share, here's what I want at the end of the day: Department breakdowns and category breakdowns. That is, how many from local, sports, UD, etc. How many reporters, line editors, copy editors, etc.

I will neither be liveblogging nor Tweeting. I will post e-mails as quickly as I can. If you have a problem with the pace, see #2 above. At the moment, I still have a job. Working this blog on a company computer feels like a bad idea.

Most of those who have gone before this have landed on their feet and say they are happier than they were when they were here. May it be so for those who leave today.

The comments are on.

200 gone from the whole DMN?

A TV-watching reader writes:

A.H.Belo rep told Fox 4 News that the 500 company-wide cuts include 200 at the DMN...that's according to the story they aired tonight on the state of journalism. For what it's worth.

Non-newsroom cuts

A commenter asks about non-newsroom layoff numbers. I'm not going to make an effort to get those. Too much already on my plate. But if
others want to post comments here with information, go ahead.

Cuts at DMN start today

But newsroom is tomorrow. Moroney sent this out this morning:

Previously Announced Reduction in Force

 

DALLAS (DATE, 2009) – As part of cost-cutting measures previously announced by parent company A. H. Belo Corporation, The Dallas Morning News is beginning today a company-wide reduction in force. The majority of the actions will take place today and tomorrow. As A. H. Belo stated in January, this initiative will affect approximately 500 jobs across all of its properties, but numbers for the individual companies were not disclosed.

 

"Our company continues to face unprecedented economic challenges during this prolonged recession, making this staff reduction a very difficult but necessary decision," said Jim Moroney, publisher and CEO of The Dallas Morning News. "As The Dallas Morning News evolves to meet these challenges, we remain committed to serving our readers and community in important and unique ways."

 

A reader has set up a Twitter group

The reader writes:

I set up a group twitter account for us. The only prblem is that the procedure for being able to post on it is slightly awkward. People need to:

1. Go to twitter.com/dmncuts and follow it.
2. LOGIN to twitter as dmncuts with the password dmncuts2009 and follow themselves.
3. Then, as the day-of progresses, they can tweet to that group by sending a text message or update to their twitter in this format: D dmncuts blah blah blah.

Yeah, it's not perfect, but the autofollow site I found only checks for new people every 6 hours. :-/

This way, we can update from our phones, etc., while things are happening.

We can document on a moment-by-moment basis. Cause that's what we do.

We're journalists.

If you know of a better way to do this, I think it's a worthwhile idea. It's less conspicuous than having the blog up at work.

The Twitter group is not affiliated with this blog and I neither endorse nor not. I think that our bosses won't mind us checking in here every so often on D Day. They'll have more their minds than this. But let a thousand flowers bloom and all that.

Morituri te salutamus

From what we're getting here, it looks like Tuesday will be D-Day. But I'm taking no chances. If today's the day, here's how I'm handling it:

1) If you are laid off and want to let people know, give contact information and or give a parting message, send me an e-mail and I'll get it posted.

2) Do not post a name in the comments as having been laid off unless it is you. This blog will have no collateral damage if I can help it.

3) Those of you keeping lists, if you want to share, here's what I want: Department breakdowns and category breakdowns. That is, how many from local, sports, UD, etc. How many reporters, line editors, copy editors, etc.

If today is not the day, we reset the clock for tomorrow. If you know that the cuts have started and you don't see it posted here yet, the comments are on.

D Day will be hard on us all. Post your feelings in the comments, but please follow the rules: No personal attacks. Period. Not on peers, not on bosses. If you want to say that any particular decision or situation at the DMN since it opened was a turd in the company punchbowl, that's fine. If you say that any particular person is a turd in the punchbowl, I'll kill that comment.

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.