ProJo exodus continues

Reporter Ellen Liberman's departure last month for a job as editor of One Union Station at WRNI, the National Public Radio affiliate here, marks the latest in the talent hemorrhage from The Providence Journal.

In the past year and a half, 54 workers have left, according to a count by The Guild Leader.

Thirty-eight editors and reporters have left the news staff - not including early departures by two-year intern reporters. It's a rate of attrition that Joel Rawson, the paper's executive editor, once called "normal," but that, in the memory of the staff itself, far exceeds the pace of past departures.

At the same time, 16 have left the departments represented in the Guild's advertising unit, which includes prepublishing and business divisions.

This exodus is painful in many ways.
It represents a loss of experience and talent that has helped make The Journal credible to read and highly
profitable. To the Guild, their leaving has left us without some of our most able and loyal friends.

The Guild Leader has sought the views of some of those who have left, as well as some still at the paper, to better understand the reasons for the outflow and to discuss its impact.

Some of the journalists and salespeople have left for once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that would be hard to turn down, made possible in some cases because of an economy that had been booming when the new jobs were offered.

Others left because they were discouraged by the direction of the newspaper, which they saw as on a downhill slide, both in terms of the quality of its journalism as well as its ability to provide a good living.

Also, the departures come in the background of the bitter negotiations between the Guild and the company, which began in October 1999 and which still are underway, draining the resources of the staff and the newspaper itself.

While apparently few have left solely because of the union-management battle, the environment certainly has added to their decision.

For example, Doug Chapman, a sports writer, who resigned after he was switched to covering soccer from the city staff to a sports assignment on the State Staff, cited the negotiations as an indication of the newspaper's current philosophy toward workers

"They also don't care about me," Chapman wrote for BigSoccer's website. "And based on the ongoing labor problems there, it doesn't appear that they care too much of anything other than the bottom line."

Liberman says that she left because her career was thwarted by editors who refused to promote her, despite the merit and quality of work, and that she had to look elsewhere if she were to advance professionally.

Some Guild people think she was being punished for her hard work for the union -- she was an outspoken member of the Executive Board, and handled one of the most demanding jobs in the union: producer of the annual Follies, managing the behind-the-scenes aspects of the program.

Before coming to The Journal in July 1994, Liberman had worked five-and-a-half years in television, freelanced to the Boston Globe for five years, and had worked at the New London Day for two-and-a-half years, and briefly (eight months) at the Narragansett Times.

Liberman first worked here in the Northwest bureau in Johnston, then moved to the West Bay bureau in Warwick 1996. Last year, she was brought onto the Journal city staff for nearly four months, to fill in for a reporter out on maternity leave. She had previously completed a three-month rotation at HERS, and she was a member of the Writing Committee.

Her hardworking reporting and detailed, punchy writing style won her the in-house writing contest several times for stories that dealt with women gambling addicts, a scholar's controversial research into a historic gravestone, the playwriting career of a wheelchair-bound Warwick native.

But Liberman found herself repeatedly passed over when the company brought in reporters who had worked here for far less time.

In an interview with The Leader, Liberman said that she went to talk to her bosses when openings appeared on the Providence staff, to remind editors that she wanted to work downtown.

"It was made very clear to me by (Metropolitan managing editor) Tom Heslin that I didn't have any opportunities for advancement," said Liberman, adding that Heslin told her, "Don't wait by the phone."

She also says he told her that she "shouldn't despair, because our work in the bureaus is very important," a view of the state staff that she bluntly characterizes as "a lie."

"I didn't really want to leave," Liberman said. "I thought I deserved a promotion, and I thought I earned one."

"And I was very, very upset at some of the things they were doing - promoting people who aren't bad people or bad reporters, but they had just walked in the door," she said. "It sends a very bad message to the people who have been out there picking the cotton."

Liberman says that "all this stuff kind of happened around the time when relationships with the union took a nosedive."

If the union-management battle is the reason behind her inability to move up the ladder here, she said, "I don't regret it. I would not passively sit and let them ram a sub-par contract down our throats."

Generally, there is less movement in the ad department, where some say new jobs are harder to come by than in news.

One long-time ad rep said that the reasons for leaving within the department are complicated: sometimes for family reasons; sometimes because workers indeed landed a better-paying job.

There also is some frustration at lack of promotional opportunities, particularly for women in the Display Ad unit.

And of course, there is much dissatisfaction with the incentive program in advertising, which pegs bonuses to sales targets that sometimes are hard to reach and which rewards team rather than individual efforts.

One of the Guild's major proposals has been to have union input into the development of the incentive program, a suggestion that the company continues to spurn.

"It's not the same place," said one sales rep. "At one time, people came here and looked to spend quite a few years."

But he said that now some are looking -- and finding -- better deals at other companies.

While the Journal had the reputation of offering a solid income, one ad person pointed out there are two colleagues in his unit who have children under 30 years old -- and that both earn more than $100,000 annually.

Here are some of the people who have left:

Barbara Forman, a sales representative for professional services ads, was a member of the Guild's bargaining team. She left for a post in the marketing department of Lifespan, the organization that runs Rhode Island, Miriam and other hospitals. Sara Elliott, an inside salesperson, left for a job in the high-tech industry. Robert Fisher, an outside sales rep, went to the Boston Globe. Sales rep Tina Cook-Sylvia told colleagues she decided to stay home with her kids. Terri Selby, inside sales, left when she and her husband, the former Journal artist Bob Selby, moved to Vermont.

In the news department, Chris Chivers, the brilliant reporter who loved writing about the outdoors and excelled in complex stories about Providence cops and pensions, went to the New York Times, arguably the country's best newspaper.

Jon Saltzman and Chris Rowland, State House reporters who teamed up to do the hard-hitting series on the state's flawed traffic court, went to WNRI public radio and the Boston Globe, respectively.
Others left simply to get out.

Maria Miro Johnson, a columnist and feature writer who wrote the controversial serial series about a surrogate mother, and Jody McPhillips, the versatile general-assignment writer who teamed up with Scott MacKay to do the widely read Rhode Island Century series, quit with no long-term career plan in mind. McPhillips has been working on a Cambodian paper, and Johnson is teaching school.

Some left because the paper was not flexible enough to meet their personal needs, including two visuals managers, Bill Ostendorf and Thea Breite, who wanted part-time schedules or leaves for family reasons.

At a staff meeting several months ago, Executive Editor Rawson described this as "normal" attrition. But others disagree. The Guild Leader sought some comments from a variety of news staff members:

Peter Lord, a 20-year veteran, says, "I just heard of someone from a smaller paper who was offered a job here and decided not to come. When she looked over the situation of unrest and ill-will, she decided not to take the job." He adds, "People never used to hesitate to come here."

Ron Cassinelli, a veteran South County staffer who started with the Journal Company in 1977 (at its former radio station) and moved over to a writer's job in 1983, says, "I have clearly seen a morale drop.

"There's no question in my mind, and that's not only in the bureau but other places, (the morale) has gone in the toilets, and that's unfortunate." Asked if that ties to the departures, Cassinelli says, "I would find it hard to believe if most of them were not connected."

Although Nora Lockwood Tooher (interviewed prior to her leave-taking) believes that some of the people who left were ready to go, "certainly there wasn't an incentive to stay. A lot of people love the work, but the conditions have deteriorated."

"There's the sense that older reporters aren't particularly valued, so there's not a lot of reason to stay," says Tooher, who announced her impending departure days after this interview. "And a lot of older people like to work at a place where they might get a raise every once in a while."

Says Tracy Breton (27-year veteran), "The sad part is, the company seems to do so very little to try and convince these people to stay." Many of them have left "because they felt totally unappreciated."

Earlier in her career, says Breton, "at this newspaper, it was almost unheard of if we had one reporter from the city staff leave in a year."

Karen Davis, who has worked here for nearly 8 years, said, "I think we definitely have a higher rate of departure than is normal. Why? I don't know. I know that people may feel that the equal opportunities for advancement, based on merit, are very, very limited."

Wayne Miller says: "It's regrettable. We've lost some very talented colleagues, and it's difficult to replace people like that. I mean, some left for career-advancement and personal reasons, but I know from talking to people that the labor climate was a significant factor.

"And I've heard anecdotally that people who might have applied here because of the Journal's reputation as a writers' newspaper have been discouraged from doing so because of the abysmal climate. It saddens me."

Miller, who has been here nearly 20 years and remains so because "the writing tradition has been so exemplary," fears that if the dispute is not resolved, "we will lose some of that."

Morgan McVicar, who has been here 15 years, said that "what is particularly distressing to me is that we've had mass exoduses before, which is natural at a paper this size, but in the previous instances, particularly in the late eighties, the reporters were leaving for papers like the Los Angeles Times, and who could blame them for leaving for papers of that ilk?

"But now, people are leaving not for better job opportunities, but because they're at the end of their rope," McVicar said. "So we're seeing a number of people either with no jobs in hand, or with jobs at papers that one would argue are inferior to the Journal."

And finally, our longtime columnist Bob Kerr says he really doesn't understand "the attempt to mug the heart and soul of this newspaper."

Perhaps, says Kerr, "it's some new management strategy we don't know about. What I do understand is that this mad, self-destructive spree is adding to that growing list of names on the bulletin board in the newsroom.

"People might not be leaving only because of the Journal management's decision to try to isolate the Newspaper Guild and destroy its members' morale.

"But it is playing a part in the decision of a lot of good people to look at other places and possibilities. And a little piece of what we are is lost with everyone who leaves. Chris Rowland, Nora Tooher, Jon Saltzman -- none of them can be replaced. And those who seem determined to turn this into a second-rate paper just don't get it.

"And that is incredibly sad."