By VANNESSA MARAVILLA
The UNITY News

The always stressful journalism industry has become even more so as rounds of buyouts and layoffs cast a cloud of uncertainty over rapidly shrinking newsrooms.

Journalists are forced to work harder than ever as they try to both keep their jobs and fill the roles of former colleagues. Many struggle to stay sane while bracing for the sting of the unexpected.

“It does affect you profoundly and is somewhat of a downer,” said Bobby Caina Calvan, a 43-year-old reporter at the Sacramento Bee. “All the while you are trying to not hear the bad news.”

The negative climate has prompted Calvan and his colleagues to band together and stick it out, bringing greater camaraderie to the newsroom.

Others, though, have simply left, opting for more stable careers such as teaching or public relations.

Ernabel Demillo, a former Fox newscaster in New York City, quit the business in 2007 after 15 years. Demillo, who said she knew she wanted to be a journalist since she was 11, said she grew tired of the daily grind.

“The business was changing,” said Demillo, lamenting the growing lack of in-depth reporting that drew her to the industry in the first place. “I eventually stopped loving it.”

Now an assistant professor in journalism at St. Peter’s College in New Jersey, Demillo finds that teaching is a way to feed her passion while imparting her expertise to the next generation.

Journalists who continue to work in newsrooms recommend learning fresh skills in multimedia to stay afloat in this business and keep burnout at bay.

“Be adaptable,” said Judy Lin, a 30-year-old reporter at the Sacramento Bee. “Play different roles beyond traditional reporting.”

Open dialogue about what the future holds could also help boost newsroom morale, said Calvan, who said he remains optimistic about the industry. Journalists are truth-seekers, making them among the most important members of a democratic society, he said.

“We are the fourth estate, the people’s advocate,” said Calvan, who entered the business because he likes questioning authority and holding government accountable. “We are the people’s conscience. That’s what makes me want to stay with it.”

While the medium or method of delivering the news may change, the job will remain essential.
“Maybe there will be fewer journalists,” Calvan said, “but the need for what we do will remain constant.

By DION RABOUIN
The UNITY News

It’s not a good time to be a newspaper reporter. In the past few years, buyouts and layoffs throughout the industry have taken the tone of normalcy. Some have been forced to face a new reality – journalism isn’t a calling anymore.

So, what are they doing?

Former newspaper journalists are doing as much as they can to transfer their skills into other areas, such as freelancing, blogging or going into public relations. Others have taken a completely new direction. One even opened an inn – for writers.

In her column for the Baltimore Sun, Jean Marbella wrote that her social life now “appears to revolve around retirement parties.” The Sun recently announced a round of 100 buyouts and layoffs.

Mariana Llamas-Cendon had been gainfully employed at Mi Estrella, a Spanish language publication of the Ventura County Star in Camarillo, Calif., but found herself suddenly out of a job when the publication’s owner, the E.W. Scripps Co., purchased another Spanish newspaper and laid off the three-person Mi Estrella staff.

Llamas-Cendon is now freelance reporting for publications in Mexico as well as doing translation work. “There’s not a lot of jobs for a bilingual journalist right now,” she said. “There are only a few, and I’ve already applied for those.”

Industry insiders blame the continuing malaise of diminished advertising and increased costs of paper stock for the job cuts and buyouts.

“Right now it’s the worst it’s been,” Marbella said. “It’s not so much fear – there’s an immense sadness, which is an odd feeling in the newsroom.”

Others who took buyouts – voluntarily or otherwise – have chosen to leave the newspaper business behind altogether.

G. Marc Benavidez, who has been a photojournalist for 14 years, is planning to move into a career in public relations after his split with the Wichita Eagle in Kansas. Benavidez, who graduated with a degree in public relations from the University of Texas at Arlington, said that he never expected to be “retiring” from journalism so soon.

“I’m only 33 – I never thought this would happen,” said Benavidez about receiving a buyout from the Eagle. “This is not the way I wanted to end my career.”

But some recently out-of-work journalists have chosen to view their predicament as an opportunity.

“It may not seem like it, but they have done you a favor,” said Gloria Neal, a former employee of Clear Channel and Infinity Radio. “They have freed you up for your next opportunity. So you need to get up and create and go and find your next opportunity.”

Neal has done just that – taking the time to blog, appear on television talk programs and write for Denver Woman magazine.

“The days of just doing one thing in this business are no more,” Neal said. “Journalists have to be able to do more than one thing, otherwise they become obsolete. People who are resistant to change get left behind.”

Some journalists like Gina Davis, who worked for 17 years with the Tribune Co. – 15 of them with the Baltimore Sun before she accepted a buyout last month – are moving into academia. Davis is set to be the associate director of media relations at McDaniel College in Maryland.

“I probably wouldn’t have requested the buyout if I had been less sure of the next step,” Davis said. “In this economy there are just too many people out there looking and not enough jobs – at least newspaper jobs. It just so happened that I knew about this opening at the college and it came together very quickly.”

Tina Brown is currently making a 180-degree career move. Brown, who accepted a buyout at the Hartford Courant in Connecticut, is planning to open her own bed-and-breakfast in Savannah, Ga., as a haven for distracted writers. Brown said the idea came to her while she was working on her literary nonfiction book, “Crooked Road Straight.”

“About two years ago I had a friend let me stay at his place while I was finishing my manuscript, and I realized how it important it was for a writer to get away and finish what they started,” she said. “Once I got the buyout, I knew it was a done deal.”

Still, some journalists aren’t giving up.

Having seen many of their members suddenly unemployed, the organizations within UNITY have offered scholarships to members who want to attend the conference, but have been too adversely affected by the newsroom layoffs to do so.

Kathy Times, chair of the NABJ Media Institute, which has been granting the scholarships, said, “This is something that’s hitting not only the young journalists – there are people who have been in the business 10, 20 years who are out of work.”

By VANNESSA MARAVILLA
The UNITY News

Diversity is not just a feel-good thing – it’s good business, even amid turbulent times.

That is the message UNITY leaders hope to convey to media executives whose companies have gone through rounds of layoffs in recent years, slashing many minority journalists from newsrooms already struggling to represent the communities they cover.

In an attempt to stop the bleeding, AAJA president Jeanne Mariani-Belding called and wrote letters to news corporations including McClatchy Co., MediaNews Group, the Baltimore Sun and the Seattle Times beseeching executives to consider diversity before issuing pink slips. Last week, she dashed off a letter to Chicago Tribune publisher Sam Zell.

“With all these layoffs coming down, doing nothing is not an option,” said Mariani-Belding, editorial and opinions editor of the Honolulu Advertiser. “This is a crisis. Diversity cannot take steps backwards.”

Since union contracts typically mandate that layoffs be determined by seniority, young reporters of color are among the most vulnerable, she said. In her campaign to preserve newsroom diversity, Mariani-Belding said she implores employers to take reporters’ and photographers’ bilingual skills into account.

At the San Jose Mercury News, a MediaNews paper going through many rounds of layoffs in eight years, the number of minority journalists has dropped from about a third of the newsroom in 2000 to just a fifth today, said Joe Rodriguez, a columnist at the publication who conducted the survey.

In 2000, there were 410 minorities in the newsroom – that number has dipped to 155, he said. In addition to layoffs, many minority reporters decided on their own to leave the Mercury News.

The former Knight Ridder paper once known industry-wide for its commitment to diversity still lists as its core mission: “We will reflect the changing demographics of the community in both coverage and hiring, recognizing that diversity is a core component of accuracy.”

But staff members, present and past, question that commitment when jobs simply are not available.

“It doesn’t have the same priority it used to,” said Edwin Garcia, a state house reporter who has worked for the Mercury News for 16 years. “We used to play up our diversity stats a lot, but we don’t do that anymore. It makes us worry about what the future is going to look like.”

David J. Butler, editor of the Mercury News, did not return phone calls.

Nationally, the number of minorities working at newspapers has remained stagnant at about 13 percent since 2004, according to statistics compiled by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Minorities only make up 11.4 percent of managers at daily newspapers, and the rest are white, according to ASNE.

Organizations in the UNITY alliance have revamped training programs and added multimedia training and executive leadership programs to made members more indispensable to their newsrooms.

“We want to position our members not just to survive, but to thrive in this new media landscape,” Mariani-Belding said.

UNITY recently a launched program, Ten by 2010, to bring more minority journalists into the top ranks of newspaper companies. Gannett and the New York Times were the first two companies to join, said UNITY President Karen Lincoln-Michel.

Without diversity, important stories and angles would be missing and key questions would never be asked, said Brad Gorham, associate professor of communications at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

“That gets to the heart of why diversity matters,” Gorham said. “Journalism is losing by not having an adequately diversified workforce.”

By Charly Edsitty
The UNITY News Online

Recently unemployed members of the National Association of Black Journalists gathered at UNITY on Thursday to give a voice and an open ear to those affected.

The meeting was spurred by an NABJ listserv post by Tina A. Brown, which drew an overwhelming response. She has been a staff writer at The Hartford Courant for 16 years and wrote that she took a buyout from the newspaper and would be out of a job by July 31.

“People are feeling kind of panicked,” said Jackie Jones, an NABJ member who helped coordinate the impromptu gathering of affected members attending the convention. “They don’t know where the industry is going.”

NABJ offered financial assistance to recently laid-off members to enable them to attend the convention.

Jones and fellow meeting coordinator Neil Foote, explained that comments on the listserv indicated that this was an important issue among the members.

After addressing the group, which met at the Sheraton hotel, Jones and Foote opened the floor to the audience. Many shared stories of surviving several rounds of buyouts and job cuts, and discussed skills that could be transferrable to other careers.

Both Jones and Foote are working to create a volunteer committee that will assist members who lose jobs. They hope to have a committee in place in two to three weeks.

“I could feel the pain of what people were writing on the listserv,” said former NABJ President, Sidmel Estes-Sumpter, who attended the meeting.

She lost her job two years ago at a Fox affiliate in Atlanta after 27 years.

“I was broadsided, I had no clue it was coming and beat myself up wondering why I didn’t see it,” she said.

Estes-Sumpter said she sunk into a depression after losing her job and faced home foreclosure.  She is still financially struggling, but is optimistic about her future.

“The first thing is to never give up,” Estes-Sumpter said. “Second, it’s not you. You are not the problem, it’s the industry. Third, think differently about being a journalist.”

Estes-Sumpter’s story is all too familiar to Brown who explained that more than a month ago she received an e-mail from her executive editor stating that there would be “significant” buyouts and layoffs that would affect people in the newsroom.

Brown explained that her exit wasn’t about the money, but a chance to change her life and take it in another direction. Employees were given nine days to make a decision.

Brown is hopeful about her future and said she is relying on her skills to pull her through hard times. Leading by example, she hopes to show other journalists that everything is not lost.

“There may be a time when I am panicking and crying, but right now I am not there,” Brown said.  “I have my faith, savings, family, friends and most of all I have skills. I can do anything.”

Brown holds no resentment toward her former employer but worries that job cuts may be affecting the bigger picture of journalism.

“Freedom of the Press might be destroyed because people have gotten into so much debt,” Brown said.  “I’m getting bought out because a company made some bad business decisions.”

By CORINNE Z. LYONS
The UNITY News

Freezes have been placed on hiring, people have been laid off or offered buyouts, and traveling budgets have been sliced.

Many financially-strapped media companies are being forced to find more ways to reduce their budgets, and foreign bureaus, once thought to be untouchable, are being considered as a way to cut costs.

“The trend has been to reduce international reporting and reduce resources,” says John Schidlovsky, director of the International Reporting Project. “It’s financial reasons because international bureaus are expensive.”

Several journalists are fearful the industry could lose sight of the valuable role played by international reporters. They are concerned about the direction in which the industry is headed and want to bring attention to the issue.

Mary Rajkumar of the Associated Press, Keith Richburg of The Washington Post, Ellen Weiss of National Public Radio and Pradnya Joshi of The New York Times are scheduled to discuss the issue at a panel session at 11 a.m. Friday in Room W178.

The panel was designed to provide insight into what readers find relevant in the world.

For many media outlets, continuing international reporting means using wire services or freelancers. Schidlovsky said IRP provides journalists with fellowships to go overseas for five weeks. That might not be the best option, but it is better than nothing, Schidlovsky said.

Richburg said international reporting “can, and must, continue despite cutbacks.” 

For the AP, it means training journalists in other countries, said Rajkumar, international projects editor.

“International reporting is more important than ever because what happens in other countries affects all of us,” Rajkumar said. “We see repeatedly with immigration, terrorism, the Iraq war, the economy and any number of other issues. It’s also just plain interesting.”