News Cycle

The Reading (Pa.) Eagle laid off 52 employees on April 30, not an unusual move in the newspaper industry these days. But management took the extraordinary step in offering no severance to the departing workers, according to Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher’s report today. In addition, the newspaper offered only two weeks of extended health-care coverage.

“What has most people upset is there is absolutely no severance pay,” said Al Walentis, who had worked at the paper since 1974 and served as multimedia projects coordinator when he was let go Thursday. “I tried to show some professionalism. I offered to help explain the job to someone else who would take over, but they said no.”

Walentis, 57, said he was asked to leave Thursday soon after finding out his job had been terminated.

The same was true for Rebecca VanderMeulen, a four-year reporter. “I am not surprised it happened, just the way it happened,” she said, referring to the lack of severance and being escorted from the building. “I wanted to stay and wrap up some loose ends [on her beat], but they didn’t think it was appropriate.”

Assistant Photo Editor Ron Romanski might have the longest tenure at the paper, at 45 years. He said his father was a chief photographer years before him. “It shocks everybody I talk to,” he says of the lack of severance. “I’m thinking about suing them. I didn’t think it would happen to me.”

Publisher William Flippin did not return Strupp’s phone calls to comment. Associate Publisher Larry Orkus declined to comment on the situation, but confirmed in an e-mail to Strupp that the layoffs had occurred without severance pay. He said each worker was given two weeks of health benefits, which covered the period needed to apply for COBRA insurance.

U.S. journalist Roxana Saberi, on a hunger strike in an Iran Evin prison to protest her spying conviction, was hospitalized on Friday and fed intravenously, her father told the media today. She was later returned to her cell.

Saberi said his daughter looked “weak and frail” when he saw her yesterday.

The 32-year-old Iranian-American freelance journalist was tried and convicted during a one-day, closed-door trial on espionage charges and sentenced to eight years in prison. Saberi began her hunger strike to protest her imprisonment at Evin, which houses Iranian dissidents and political prisoners.

Iranian authorities revoked her press credentials in 2006, but Saberi continued to file short news items with permission from the government, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Saberi was detained in January, although no formal charges were disclosed. On April, word emerged that she had been charged with espionage.

“Without press credentials and under the name of being a reporter, she was carrying out espionage activities,” Hassan Haddad, a deputy public prosecutor, told the Iranian Students News Agency.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced today the names of 16 people banned from entering the United Kingdom since October. One of the people banned is conservative talk-radio host Michael Savage.

“I think it’s important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it’s a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won’t be welcome in this country,” Smith told GMTV.

“Coming to this country is a privilege. If you can’t live by the rules that we live by, the standards and the values that we live by, we should exclude you from this country and, what’s more, now we will make public those people that we have excluded.

“We are publishing the names of 16 of those that we have excluded since October. We are telling people who they are and why it is we don’t want them in this country.”

In reference to Savage, Smith said that “this is someone who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country.”

Others banned include Baptist pastor Fred Waldron Phelps Snr and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper, Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astal, Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen Donald Black, neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe, preachers Wadgy Abd El Hamied Mohamed Ghoneim, Abdullah Qadri Al Ahdal, Safwat Hijazi and Amir Siddique, Muslim activist Abdul Ali Musa (previously Clarence Reams), murderer and Hezbollah terrorist Samir Al Quntar and Kashmiri terror group leader Nasr Javed. Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, the former leaders of a violent Russian skinhead gang which committed 20 racially motivated murders, are also banned but are currently serving prison terms.

Management has announced that it will not file a plant-closing notice today — as required by law — to close the Boston Globe after reaching concessions from six of seven unions.

“We expect to achieve both the workplace flexibility, and the financial savings that we sought from these unions,” Globe spokesman Robert Powers said in a statement on the Globe’s website. “We are not, therefore, making a filing today.” Companies are required by law to give 60-days notice to the state and employees before closing a business.

The Globe reached agreements with unions representing delivery truck drivers, mailers, press operators, electricians, machinists and technical services workers. Those unions represent about 500 employees. The agreements still must be ratified by a vote of members in each unions. The sole union without an agreement is the Boston Newspaper Guild, which represents more than 600 editorial, advertising and commercial workers.

The Globe reported that Guild leaders left talks today without a deal, with the elimination of lifetime job guarantees enjoyed by about 190 members said to be a key issue separating the two sides. Leaders in unions with similar job guarantees have made concessions on the issue, but declined to release details, the Globe said.

Reporters Sans Frontières marked World Press Freedom Day by handing in a petition for Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi’s release at the Iranian embassy in Paris. Sentenced to eight years in prison in Tehran on a charge of spying for the United States, Saberi is now on the 13th day of a hunger strike, according to Reporters Sans Frontières.

Saberi was admitted to the Evin prison hospital on May 1 because she had stopped taking liquids. “She is very weak, but she is still determined to go all the way,” her father, Reza Saberi, told Reporters Sans Frontières today.

Four members of Reporters Sans Frontières, including its secretary-general, Jean-François Julliard, began a hunger strike on April 28 in Paris in solidarity with Saberi. As it symbolically took over her protest in this manner, Reporters Sans Frontières urged Saberi to end her own hunger strike. “She needs to know she is not alone,” the press freedom organization has repeatedly said.

“We are going to continue this protest in other forms,” Reporters Sans Frontières today. “Saberi has not committed any crime and must be released without delay. The Iranian president must not use this young woman for his election campaign or as a bargaining chip in his relations with Europe or the United States.”

Members of Reporters Sans Frontières have been stationed outside the Iran Air office in Paris, located at 63 Avenue des Champs-Elysées, since 11 a.m. on April 28, handing out leaflets and collecting signatures. The protest intensified all week, spreading to London, New York, Washington, Madrid and Brussels. In Paris, more than 800 people signed the petition for Saberi’s release.

There were 1,257 reported new layoffs from newspapers in the United States in April, which represented an easing of the layoff activity from March, when almost 4,000 newspaper employees were dismissed, News Cycle’s survey has found.

During the first four months of 2009, there were a reported 8,793 layoffs from print news organizations.

In April, more than 200 Belo employees were laid off, but that figure was included previously when it was reported in January that 500 were to be let go.

These figures represent journalists, business personnel, advertising employees, production and delivery workers from daily, weekly, monthly and some journalism trade publications.

The vast majority reflects layoffs, but some are from buyouts offered by news organizations or jobs lost because of a newspaper ceasing its operations.

There were 2,101 reported layoffs in January. Newspapers cut 1,492 people in February. At least 3,943 people lost their jobs in newspapers in March.

Email me to report any job cuts in the newspaper industry, or corrections and additions to any of the 2009 lists.

April 30: Reading (Pa.) Eagle, 52 people.
April 30: Altoona (Pa.) Mirror, two people.
April 30: The Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, Mass., five people.
April 29: Presstime, the trade publication of NAA, ceases publication, 39 people.
April 29: The Baltimore Sun, 61 people editorial and seven people on business side.
April 28: Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press, 20 people.
April 27: The Morning News of Springdale (Ark.), at least nine people.
April 23: Phoenix Media/Communication Group, six people.
April 22: Chicago Tribune, 53 people.
April 21, The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., 14 people, part of the Belo announcement of 500 people.
April 20, The Los Angeles Daily News, five people.
April 20: Sun-Times Media Group, 140 people.
April 18, The Pioneer Press of Glenview, Ill., 12 people, part of the Sun-Times Media Group layoff of April 20.
April 18, Naperville (Ill.) Sun, three people, part of the Sun-Times Media Group layoff of April 20.
April 17: Daily Southtown near Chicago, five people plus more in advertising, part of the Sun-Times Media Group layoff of April 20.
April 16: The News & Record of Greensboro, N.C., 25 people.
April 15: Lake Norman (N.C.) Times ceases publication; six people.
April 15: Suburban Journals of St. Louis, 15 people.
April 15: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, nine people.
April 15: San Francisco Chronicle, at least 90 drivers.
April 15: East Valley Tribune in Phoenix, 13 people.
April 14: Orlando Sentinel , 44 people in addition to the March 21 announcement of 36 people.
April 14: The Jersey Journal of Jersey City, N.J., 17 people.
April 13: The Observer & Eccentric Newspapers will cease publication of five Eccentric print and Web editions in Michigan on May 31. The papers are: The Birmingham, West Bloomfield, Troy and Rochester editions of the Eccentric. The Southfield edition will merge with another publication, 44 people.
April 10: The Honolulu Star-Bulletin and MidWeek, 23 people.
April 9: Carson (Nev.) Times ceases publication, 12 people listed in its online staff box.
April 9: The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., 40 people.
April 8: Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal, 35 people.
April 8: Dallas Morning News, 200 people, part of A.H. Belo’s January announcement of 500 layoffs nationwide.
April 4: Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times, five positions will not be filled.
April 3: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, at least 12 advertising staffers.
April 3: Loveland (Colo.) Reporter-Herald, three people.
April 3: Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette, 20 people.
April 3: Palo Alto (Calif.) Daily News, one person.
April 3: Fort Meyers (Fla.) News-Press, six people, via tip to News Cycle.
April 3: Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, 84 jobs.
April 2: Arizona Republic in Phoenix, at least 30 in circulation; The Indianapolis Star, eight in classified; Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, 18 circulation managers; the Fremont (Ohio) News-Messenger and Port Clinton News-Herald, three people;
Planet Discover web service, 10 people; the Gannett Health Care Group newspaper, 27 people; the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, 10 people; all part of a Gannett move.
April 2: Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, lays off 59 people, will not fill another 31 positions.
April 1: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 31 people.
April 1: Lebanon (Pa.) Daily News, seven people.
April 1: The Asbury Park Press will house the regional operation at its offices in Neptune, N.J. The other three Gannett Co. papers are the Home News Tribune of East Brunswick, the Courier News of Somerville and the Daily Record of Parsippany, 10 people.
April 1: Lancaster (Pa.) Intelligencer Journal and Lancaster New Era will combine operations and lay off 100 people.
April 1: The Livingston County Daily Press & Argus of Howell, Mich., at least 10 people.