Philadelphia Inquirer employees start hearing the news

I like to keep track of the whereabouts of possible Cy Young and MVP voters, and to a lesser degree HOF voters, so I notice news of staffing changes at newspapers. I say 'possible,' because some newspapers' ethics guidelines prevent baseball awards voting, and after that a voter has to be 'selected' by the politicos of the BBWAA for a particular award. Anyhow, the Philadelphia Inquirer is announcing 68-71 layoffs (per the NY Times), and preliminary reports don't mention any sports guys (I'm aware that Jayson Starke, a Philadelphia area BBWAA voter cast a vote for NL MVP in 2005 as an employee of ESPN.com, not a Philadelphia newspaper--so you see it's an amorphous process. And some are allowed to vote for HOF but not any other awards, as is the case with Tim Kurkjian, as I've quoted on this blog). The Times notes: "A few years ago, The Inquirer hired more than 40 young reporters as part of a major expansion into the suburbs. Now, many of those jobs are being eliminated." and "It lost more than 75 people in buyouts a year ago." Which caused me to think,

• They're making a huge drawn-out deal over these layoffs, but it sounds first of all like a bad business decision was made just a few years ago to hire 40 new reporters and expand into the suburbs. And, possibly the hirings would've painted a more optimistic picture when it came time to sell the paper from Knight Ridder to McClatchy. (I'm aware of the stated overall revenue problems here and at other papers).

These people are lucky they have a union. Many people can be let go on 5 minutes notice without a single tear being shed about them in any newspaper. I wonder if these newspaper people know how others live, or do they just operate in their little bubble of entitlement? Article referenced is from the NY Times, 1/3/07 by Katharine Q. Seelye, Layoffs Imminent at Philadelphia Inquirer

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