The headline says it all, and adds a nasty twist to this week’s purge at The Sun in Baltimore. Here’s part of The Guardian’s report on how the Tribune-owned Sun did the deed:
The group, consisting of three writers and a photographer, were told the news as they reported back from a game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Los Angeles Angels in a move that was documented by a fellow reporter online.
“Tough times in the newspaper biz,” wrote the OC Register’s Bill Plunkett as an aside during his inning-by-inning update from the game. “Two writers for the Baltimore Sun in the press box here got the news – by phone, during the game – that they had been laid off in the latest round of cost-cutting. Stay classy, Baltimore Sun management.”
Plunkett subsequently updated his comments, adding that another reporter and a photographer had also been axed in the same way.
Here’s the original blog post that Plunkett wrote.
Meanwhile, I’ll ask one indelicate question:
I’ve never been a sportwriter (with two or three notably poor exceptions in my 15 years in journalism), but… how many reporters does a newspaper need at a minimum to cover a baseball game? (The Wall Street Journal discovered last month: not as many as we have) It’s the same question I had when I discovered that The Boston Globe — which could learn whether it will live or die by tonight — has five science reporters. I like it when the job market I work in has lots of places for me to do what I do, but… five science reporters?
