Newspaper Guild to hold online chat, Aug, 13
August 8, 2008
The Northern California Media Workers Guild plan to commemorate the Bay Area News Group East Bay’s (BANG-EB) birthday with a live moderated online Web chat on Wednesday, August 13, from Noon to 1:00 p.m., www.onebigbang.org This is the place to raise your questions to newspaper employees about what you see — and don’t see — in your local paper, and whether quality journalism can be sustained amid the historic downturns of the newspaper industry? The Guild wants to hear from you — please join the conversation:
Newspaper Guild on shaky ground at Bay Area News Group
June 18, 2008
The recent vote 104-92 vote authorizing the Newspaper Guild to represent qualified Bay Area Newsgroup employees, mostly reporters, may herald potential labor strife. According to Editor and Publisher, Read more
Contra Costa Times continues campaign finance coverup
June 2, 2008
The Contra Costa Times continues to allow its political reporter, Lisa Vorderbrueggen, to avoid full disclosure concerning her complete refusal to cover the subornation of the electoral process in Contra Costa County by special interest Independent Expenditures. In an comment (#34) posted on her blog, Lisa Vorderbrueggen does nothing but dissemble and tell tall tales to avoid admitting the truth that she was either played by campaign managers posing as her friends or she is a bent reporter that lets her political bias inform her decisions about what to write about or not. Read more
The number Lisa Vorderbrueggen will not report
May 30, 2008
BIG OIL, unions, real estate and developer interests have so far spent $215,298.64 to smear Guy Houston and ensure Mary Piepho retains her Supervisor seat. That’s an awful lot of money changing hands to not be noticed by an ace political reporter. Read more
Contra Costa Times to outsource customer service to Philippines
May 8, 2008
Pat Keeble sends word that the Denver Business Times (DBJ) reports that MediaNews Group, publishers of the Contra Costa Times and the Bay Area Newspapers (BANG) is now outsourcing customer services for some of its California dailies — including the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, and San Jose Mercury News — to the Philippines. Read more
Ryan Huff to leave Contra Costa Times
March 7, 2008
Intrepid Reporter, Ryan Huff, who bravely and diligently covered the County Beat, will leave the Contra Costa Times, effective Tuesday, March 11. More than 100 Bay Area Media News employees took the recent buyout offer. In an e-mail to Halfway To Concord, Huff noted “newspapers across the country are being stung by the real estate market and the Internet — and the Times is no exception.” Huff noted that, the “company in the coming weeks will be assessing how to fill the holes left by those who are leaving.”
We all wish Ryan and his family the very best in their careers.
Contra Costa Council offers Supervisor candidate forum, Mar 14
March 4, 2008
The Contra Costa Council will sponsor candidate forum on Friday, March 14 at the Round Hill Country Club in San Ramon, 3169 Round Hill Road, Alamo. Registration begins at 10:00 a.m. with the first presentation at 10:30: a.m., followed by lunch, and a second session in the early afternoon.
The forum will include Supervisor candidates for District 3 and District 5, and will be moderated by Lisa Vorderbrueggen of the Contra Costa Times. Wells Fargo, The Bowlby Group, Chevron, Morgan Miller Blair, and Tesoro helped underwrite the event. Tickets for the event including light lunch are $35 for members and $50 for non-members. Fax reservations with Visa/MasterCard/American Express information to (925) 674-1654.
Why the Republican Party sucks in Contra Costa County?
March 1, 2008
Get in on the interesting discussion over at Lisa Vorderbrueggen’s blog concerning the recent decline of the Republican Party in Contra Costa County.
MediaNews killing messengers of democracy
February 25, 2008
Killing the messenger with a BANG
By Pat Keeble
Editor, contracostainsider.com
I wonder if Dean Lesher, for whom I worked for 27 years, would understand what’s going on at the Contra Costa Times and its sister papers, which he started and owned for so long. He would do lay-offs every two or three years or so.
We’d say, “he must need money” and in due time he’d announce he was building a new printing plant in North Concord or buying into the Walnut Creek Regional Arts Center. And in a year or so we’d be back up to strength.
But he never gutted the paper. It was a matter of saving a little money, and at the same time maybe let the editors delete a few of the lesser staff. We didn’t have a union so we had no protection whatsoever from economic cutbacks. But it always came back.
What’s going on now, combined with what else is going on in the newspaper business, is a comparative slaughterhouse. With the News Media merger, gobbling up Bay Area papers and adding to numerous mergers around the country in recent years, the news window is narrowing. Fewer newspapers, featuring “combined” coverage by fewer reporters, are not replacing today’s news with better news. It’s eliminating news, particularly local news, that is not being replaced by other media.
The new organization has invited the employees of all the papers to apply for a buy-out or risk being fired. In such cases, the experienced (and higher paid) journalists are the first to go. Coverage gets “combined” as newspapers merge. Fewer voices are presented. Read more
