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Tronc Is Building A Shadow Newsroom Full Of Scabs, L.A. Times Staffers Fear
Source: Huffington Post
MEDIA 01/26/2018 07:53 pm ET Updated 9 hours ago
Tronc Is Building A Shadow Newsroom Full Of Scabs, L.A. Times Staffers Fear
A mysterious new management team appears to be quietly building a non-union network.
By Ashley Feinberg, Dave Jamieson, and Matt Ferner
As lunch was winding down Wednesday in the Los Angeles Times cafeteria, Bruce Upbin, one of several newly hired but as-yet-unannounced assistant managing editors, sat alone at a table speaking a little too loudly into his headphone mic.
Upbin was a mystery to much of the newspaper’s staff, which had just voted to unionize the week before. He was one of several similarly unannounced middle-manager types who had come aboard in recent weeks. Although he and the others were listed in the Times’ human resources software as having editorial titles, they were reporting to Rob Angel, the Times’ chief business development officer. These new L.A. managers had also been working on the second floor, despite the newsroom being on the third. And, of course, there was the bizarre fact that they had yet to be introduced to any of the actual newsroom staff of about 400.
One L.A. Times employee, who spoke to HuffPost on the condition of anonymity, overheard Upbin say they were creating a national newsroom outside of the union, to service all of Tronc’s markets. Tronc, formerly Tribune Publishing, is the owner of the L.A. Times, along with other newspapers in 10 markets across the country.
Upbin also mentioned that he had a total of five people to hire. This was the closest thing Times employees have gotten in weeks to a real answer about what the company is up to — and it was a confirmation of some of their worst fears.
The new management team is apparently being framed as part of a “reorganization,” according to Harvard’s Nieman Lab. ...
-snip-
Tronc Is Building A Shadow Newsroom Full Of Scabs, L.A. Times Staffers Fear
A mysterious new management team appears to be quietly building a non-union network.
By Ashley Feinberg, Dave Jamieson, and Matt Ferner
As lunch was winding down Wednesday in the Los Angeles Times cafeteria, Bruce Upbin, one of several newly hired but as-yet-unannounced assistant managing editors, sat alone at a table speaking a little too loudly into his headphone mic.
Upbin was a mystery to much of the newspaper’s staff, which had just voted to unionize the week before. He was one of several similarly unannounced middle-manager types who had come aboard in recent weeks. Although he and the others were listed in the Times’ human resources software as having editorial titles, they were reporting to Rob Angel, the Times’ chief business development officer. These new L.A. managers had also been working on the second floor, despite the newsroom being on the third. And, of course, there was the bizarre fact that they had yet to be introduced to any of the actual newsroom staff of about 400.
One L.A. Times employee, who spoke to HuffPost on the condition of anonymity, overheard Upbin say they were creating a national newsroom outside of the union, to service all of Tronc’s markets. Tronc, formerly Tribune Publishing, is the owner of the L.A. Times, along with other newspapers in 10 markets across the country.
Upbin also mentioned that he had a total of five people to hire. This was the closest thing Times employees have gotten in weeks to a real answer about what the company is up to — and it was a confirmation of some of their worst fears.
The new management team is apparently being framed as part of a “reorganization,” according to Harvard’s Nieman Lab. ...
-snip-
Read more: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/los-angeles-times-scab-fears_us_5a6a09bbe4b06e2532657c66
