Features

More Jobs Lost At BANG’s East Bay Papers

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday November 13, 2008 - 09:39:00 AM

California’s leading newspaper publisher, Dean Singleton’s MediaNews, is shedding eight more jobs in the East Bay. 

BANG-EB, short for Bay Area News Group-East Bay, was created out of the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, Fremont Argus and other newspapers assembled by the media mogul and allowed him, briefly, to bust the Media Workers Guild by adding the staff of the non-union Times to the union shops in Oakland and Fremont. 

The guild responded last week with an organizing drive that reinstated the union shops, adding the Times staff as a bonus. 

But the union’s efforts haven’t stopped the drastic downsizing that continued with Thursday’s announcement. 

In an e-mail to union colleagues, guild unit chair Sara Steffens notified them that still more newsroom positions were on the block. Steffens herself was the subject of one of the earlier rounds of downsizing. 

“In a note sent to the Guild office this afternoon, Human Resources director Laurie Fox said the company planned to cut eight jobs from our bargaining unit, effective Nov. 14,” Steffens reported. “They did not provide any details about which employees, departments or newsrooms may be affected by the proposed cuts.” 

The local currently represents 200 staffers in the East Bay papers. 

Steffens said more cuts will come from non-union positions as well. 

Previous layoffs had reduced the chain’s pool of journalist by 100 positions to a current level of about 200. 

“Members of our bargaining team will meet with the company first thing Monday morning to begin negotiations,” Steffens said in her e-mail. “We intend to do everything we can to lessen the impact of this blow on our unit members and our already understaffed newsrooms.” 

The layoffs have hit hard, cutting back on the ability of the papers to cover local news. At just one paper, the Argus, the reporting staff is down by half and the editorial staff by two-thirds. 

Rumors of the coming layoffs had circulated through the chain’s newsrooms shortly before the election. 

Singleton owns most of the newsrooms in both the Bay Area and the Los Angeles basin, boasting a combined circulation greater than those of the combined circulations of the Tribune Company’s Los Angeles Times and Hearst’s San Francisco Chronicle.