Having worked at The Plain Dealer for 16 years in Cleveland, and knowing 27 employees were about to be informed they would be laid off, I was a bit anxious and nervous in waiting to learn who was being let go.
        After all, I was laid off from a U.S. daily at the end of the July; nearly five months later, I still have nightmares about my final day.
        I’m still unemployed, and still saddled with a sense of rejection, humiliation, and hopelessness.
        I didn’t want friends at the PD to have to go through what I’m experiencing now.
        So when I learned the names of who was on the list at the Plain Dealer early Tuesday morning, many of whom I had known for years, I had a fairly good sense of the gamut of emotions racking their bones: anger, rejection, a sense of despair in a sagging economy, how will they pay their rent and mortgages, what does the future hold in a dying industry, will they ever find a job again, especially when you are too young to retire and possibly too old to be considered a prospective candidate to another employer.
        Plain Dealer editor Susan Goldberg had the unpleasant task Tuesday morning of notifying 27 of her employees by phone between the hours of 7-9:30 a.m that they were being laid off.
        I’m sure the process must have been a difficult one, but I can’t help but applaud Goldberg for having the temerity in calling the employees herself instead of leaving it to her assistants. That would have been the easy way.
         It certainly was more professional than the way I was informed at the end of July; which involved being tapped on the shoulder by an assistant managing editor; she walked 30 feet ahead of me, while we marched up to the Human Resources Department; and before I knew it—I was being ushered to the exit doors by a security guard like a common criminal.
        I never received as much as a token ``goodbye and good luck’’ email, letter, or phone call from the editor. How much effort would that have taken?
        But that really shouldn’t have surprised me. Just days before employees were about to learn their fate, a features department employee asked the editor who came walking by how he was holding up. ``I know how difficult this must be for you, the reporter asked him. The editor’s response: ``Not really.’’
        Apparently, the layoffs that were about to come down was just another day at the beach for this editor. But then again, those who work in glass offices don’t have to worry how others are holding up.
        Until I learned of the Plain Dealer’s procedure for notifying employees that they were being laid off—I assumed all newspapers resorted to the same Gestapo tactics as the newspaper that laid me off.
            When I emailed Goldberg about the layoff process, she responded: ``we tried to do this in the most humane way possible, and in a way that preserved people's privacy when first hearing bad news.’’
        Without getting into specifics on the layoffs that took place last spring, William Schmidt, Assistant Managing Editor of The New York Times wrote through an email, that ``we worked very hard last spring to preserve the dignity of everyone involved in what is by definition a very unpleasant, even painful, process.  ``To that end, Schmidt explained, newsroom employees in New York who were to be laid off met individually with either the Executive editor or one of the two Managing editors, so they could be told directly and privately about the decision.   ``Employees outside of New York facing layoffs also were told in person by a Masthead editor.’’ ``No one was escorted out the building.  Some returned to their desks and worked another few days, departing on an agreed date.''
        Greg Moore, editor of the Denver Post, who, by the way, was a city hall reporter, day city editor, and state editor at the Plain Dealer before moving on to the Boston Globe, informed me by email last night that  he has only laid off nine people and in every case ``I spoke with the people directly myself. ``They were allowed to go back to their work stations, given the option to work or not until the last day they were on the payroll. ``I have never had anyone escorted out of the building.’’
        So now I’m slowly beginning to learn there is indeed a sense of protocol when it comes to laying off employees. 
        There are in fact editors who take responsibility for their newsrooms in good times as well as in not so good times. 
        At least it’s encouraging to know there are editors out there, like Moore, and Bill Keller of the Times' who stepped to the plate and informed employees eyeball-to-eyeball that they were being let go. There are editors like Goldberg, who didn’t leave it to the HR department to do her dirty work, she informed the employee herself by phone.
        As more and more newspapers begin the uncomfortable task of laying off employees, there seems to be a growing interest how tactful newspapers are when notifying employees they’re about to be jettisoned..
        American Journalism Review, for example, is conducting a survey asking respondents to indicate how they were treated when they were shown the door.
        Maybe this survey will show, like Moore, Keller, and Goldberg that not all editors are as insensitive and cold-hearted as I was led to believe.
***

NOTE: Plain Dealer employees were obviously distraught by the news of the recent layoffs. JoEllen Corrigan, a news researcher at the newspaper, who thankfully was spared, has launched a blog in helping employees get through this difficult period.
There is also a Plain Dealer Alumni  news blog,  which is posting updates on the recent PD developments.
***
Plain Dealer Update
        I just received an email from long-time Plain Dealer staffer Jack Hagan, who first started working at the PD in 1975,  first briefly as a copy aide, then as a court and general assignment reporter. 
        Hagan left the paper in December, 2004, and is now a Student Media Coordinator at Cuyahoga Community College.
        When I asked him  how the industry has changed over the years, Hagan responded that his ``attachment to the newspaper began to change as more and more emphasis was placed on what the paper looked like. ``You’d begin to discuss a story with an editor and that editor would start talking graphics and photography. ``It isn’t like storytelling is dead, it’s just that the energy and focus of newspapers is so much on packaging of stories. `` I think that might have been the biggest change, that move from emphasis on the reporting and writing to graphics and layout.''
        And of his favorite memories of Ohio's largest newspaper, Hagan went on to write: ``It was quite a blast at times, even if I left too many brain cells on the floors of too many seedy bars.  ``Don Bean’s eye for the absurd. Bob Daniels unique cadence when he told stories, Steve Hatch’s brand of unionism. Bob McGruder’s professionalism.  ``I soaked it all in. And occasionally I wrote a half-way decent story. It’s a shame that not a whole lot of people will be able to have that kind of experience. ``They’ll never know what they missed''

        Speaking of Don Bean,  the former loud-mouthed if charming gregarious police beat and general assignment reporter (long since retired) always seemed to have a number of jokes rolled up his sleeve, which he pulled out when the moment was right.

    Two of my favorites, the cagey veteran once told me as if were yesterday:

• ``I drank for years and no one suspected a thing, until I came in sober one day’

• ``I went to a Christmas party and everyone was feeling merry, until Mary got mad and left.''

-Bill Lucey
billlucey@bellsouth.net