Plain Dealer editor George Rodrigue has announced that the paper will lay off nearly half of its unionized workforce in early 2019 as it transitions to a “centralized production hub.”
The announcement came only days after the Plain Dealer News Guild, fighting for its survival, presented a counter proposal to the outsourcing plan that Advance Publications reportedly began to explore in October. Bargaining has been ongoing this month.
Rodrigue sent a letter to local news editors and published it on Cleveland.com Dec. 27 before employees themselves learned that their jobs would soon be gone.
Rodrigue has characterized the decision as an effort to preserve quality local coverage while creating efficiencies. Most of the employees and local observers, however, view the decision as a continuation of Advance’s union-busting efforts, which began with the strategic schism of the print (union, Plain Dealer) and digital (non-union, Cleveland.com) newsrooms.
The PD’s union was the nation’s first news guild (Local 1) and at its height represented more than 700 reporters and editors in the region. The few who remain work under a contract that expires in February, at which point all signs point to the union’s final dismantling. In social media posts, the Guild has explicitly characterized the recent decision as “union busting.”
The logistics of the move to a centralized production hub remain unclear, but the 29 editors and designers who assemble the paper before it’s printed — selecting stories for the print edition, writing headlines, creating graphics — will ostensibly be “outsourced” to a hub which performs similar functions for a number of papers.
Rodrigue said this centralization concept has been industry tested and proven to be effective, but local journalists have strenuously disputed the notion that an overburdened national staff, working from generic templates, can produce the same level of quality that local editors and designers can. They also question the meaning of “local editorial control,” which Rodrigue insisted the PD would retain.
“Have fun with that local editorial control when you need to make a change and you have to run it past a different, short staffed company that is juggling 15 other papers,” former PD design editor Josh Crutchmer wrote on social media, in a widely shared thread.
Rodrigue said the paper solicited bids for work from “companies that specialize in centralized production services” but ultimately decided to contract with Advance Local (i.e. the company that owns Cleveland.com and Advance Publications, the Plain Dealer’s corporate parent). It is outsourcing jobs, in other words, to itself. When Scene followed up, Rodrigue said that the Advance “Print Lab” services 19 newspapers and that editing work was conducted at a number of facilities. He said he wasn’t sure where the PD would be assembled moving forward, but that specific arrangements would be worked out in the coming weeks.
When Scene aired our suspicion that Advance never intended to take the Guild’s counter proposal seriously — that the idea of “soliciting bids” was itself laughable, given the outcome — Rodrigue said that wasn’t the case.
“This was a serious business decision, involving much deliberation. My focus was on helping us provide the best possible newspaper for the future, taking into account the forces that are battering our industry. I wish circumstances had not warranted us to consider exploring options and ultimately to make this change, because our Pub Hub staff produces a wonderful newspaper. They’re total professionals, deeply committed to Cleveland. But, given the ongoing challenges print newspapers face, I think we made the best available decision.”
Rodrigue’s letter said that current production staff will be invited to apply for new jobs, in Cleveland, editing local content.
The savings this system offers The Plain Dealer will come largely from sharing the cost of editing and designing pages of non-local news, which make up roughly half of our newspaper. In all other ways, The Plain Dealer will remain a local institution. Editorial decision making will remain the responsibility of The Plain Dealer’s editors. Local stories will be selected and copy-edited by veteran journalists based in Cleveland.We make this decision with some sadness, but with the long-term preservation of The Plain Dealer at heart. This change offers savings where they are least likely to harm the quality of our newspaper. It preserves local editing of local stories. It allows us to focus on the coverage that matters most to our community: in-depth breaking news, investigative journalism, stories that explain issues and events, and coverage that helps people make the most of everything northeast Ohio has to offer. In a world of difficult choices and unavoidable change, this is the option that best serves our readers.
Via PD reporters, after their colleagues received word that their jobs would be lost, they sent messages to the bargaining team, thanking them for their efforts. They then returned to their work, designing and editing the next day’s newspaper.
This article appears in Dec 26, 2018 – Jan 1, 2019.
How many union employees does Scene have?
And we use journalism meaning leftist, communist, socialist, and any other term meaning loser. Good riddance to them all. Hopefully the scene will wise up too and get rid of those that support everything that turned Cleveland into a shithole for 50 years. Were finally digging out so hopefully these journalists can go to Venezuela or Cuba with their like thinkers. Im sure the remaining leftist papers will pick right up on the flood of low price progressive journalists and start making low pay offers.
Tell me again about why Cleveland is such a shithole, you POS.
Unions are inefficient relics that drive jobs overseas or to states that dont have them. Let the free market decide…
They also gave American workers the eight-hour day, the five-day week, overtime, paid vacations, holidays, sick days, minimum wage, and so many other perks that workers in this country take for granted without realizing how they came about and who helped to create them. People were willing to give their lives in order to better them, and the company goons and the police and the miltary accommadated them, by the hundreds. Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.
Perfectly articulated..Our countrys students and teachers are largely now ignorant of the unin history described above in solidarity forever.
Haven’t just read about that history since I was a kid, I lived it. I was a member of the union that the PeeDee is attempting to destroy. Not the same local, though…it was Local 71 in Chicago.
They couldn’t save my job, nor hundreds of others, when the paper went under. Nor did they go to bat for me when I had grievances against my boss, who was fucking me over, big-time. But without them I’d have been working third shift eight days a week for peanuts. We knew what the union meant, and how vital its
continued existence was. Management knew it as well.
if labor unions are a relic of the past, what about unions of capitalists?
Where did corporations come from? An act of God?
Nope. Lawyers, politicians, and money. Yet corporations are legally “persons” with state protections for their “God given Rights”. SMDH
It wasn’t that long ago when cowardly Chris Quinn was essentially demanding that the sportswriters take company loyalty oaths to never pursue employment opportunities elsewhere.
Is that shit even legal? Maybe at the federal or state level, or perhaps at the city level, but loyalty to a private entity would never hold up in court. What arrogant bullshit! Loyalty oaths were all about swearing allegiance to a form of government, as in the Federal government not a corporation. It was a promise not to attempt to underming or overthrow or sabotage it. They were big in the anti-Communist McCarthy ‘witch hunt’ era, and were required by some state civil service workers and teachers during the Vietnam years. I had to sign one, and after I was arrested and beaten by state police during the post-Kent State didturbances,, my boss told me to hit the road because “I don’ty want any Commies working for me.” Hadn’t even gone to court yet. And the decsion was upheld. Chris Quinn is an ignorant asshat.
Hey “Bye” everything you’re describing was caused by capitalism. It was capitalism that sent jobs overseas because it was cheaper to produce there even though companies were making nice profits using American workers. Socialism did not exist, does not exist here in the corporate sphere, and has nothing to do with why Cleveland is a “shithole” as you describe it.
You can’t expect conservatives to keep subscribing to a left wing paper, Maybe you liberals should of bought more papers? The core subscribers are over 60, mostly conservative and were subscribers. I can’t believe you socialists can’t understand economics! This has absolutely nothing to do with union busting, but that’s all we hear.If you want to go with liberal lies, fine, just don’t expect conservatives to pay for your propaganda. So pony up you deadbeat liberals or shut up.