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Charles Storch worked for the Tribune for 30 years. Years ago he gave me more competition than I could handle as a media writer. His most recent assignment has been covering the arts and philanthropy. He wrote an item recently about the MacArthur Foundation giving $250,000 to Pro Publica, the not-for-profit news room created last year in New York City to do investigative journalism. If he'd stayed on the beat, Storch would have been writing more and more about journalism's emerging business model -- not-for-profit and financed by grants and subscribers, after the fashion of public radio.

But the Tribune is very much the old model -- sell ads, sell papers, or die. On Wednesday Storch was laid off, one of about a dozen newsroom employees to lose their jobs. Worse is to come. Earlier in the week, editor Gerould Kern and publisher Tony Hunter warned the staff that a "dramatic right-sizing" was necessary and would be imposed at the end of the year.

In addition to Storch they include national correspondents Stevenson Swanson and Lisa Anderson. The Tribune is pulling in its horns.

As we talked by phone today, Storch looked around him in the features section. "Terry Armour used to sit on my right -- it's been almost a year since his death. Alan Solomon used to sit in front of me. Ever since he left [earlier this year] we have a little cut-out of him with his face plastered on it and a Hawaiian shirt on him."

Solomon was a travel writer. The interesting thing, I said, is that his desk is still empty. "Yeah," said Storch, "there are a lot of empty desks around and one more as of tomorrow." I said that maybe they could clear some of those desks out and lay down a shuffleboard court. He had a better idea. "Maybe they could bring in another pinball machine," Storch said. "That was one of the early things Sam Zell brought to the company -- he put a pinball machine in the cafeteria."

Can't say Zell hasn't tried.

Meanwhile, Gannett's laying off 2,000 or more people, and this independent blog has become the forum that keeps track of the numbers and gossip while letting victims grieve among friends.


Comments
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Andrew Patner
December 4th - 6:20 p.m.
I covered or was otherwise involved in/with most of the beats that Charlie Storch covered over the last 27 years (save the previousl unfairness done to him by management when he was put on some sort of suburban copy desk for far too long) for various "competing" publications and radio outlets.

In all of that time he was one of the hardest-working and most thoughtful reporters I knew, with a very enviable record of accuracy and integrity in his work. He was a model colleague and "competitor." His "layoff" is a loss for journalism and for the arts, not-for-profit, philanthropic worlds in Chicago and for the larger Chicago community as a whole. Sad times indeed.
Bill
December 4th - 7:17 p.m.
Is Mark Caro still there? He seems to have disappeared from the print edition and from Pop Machine. I'll miss his work if so -- a good interviewer and good quirky writer.
John
December 4th - 7:26 p.m.
Mark is still there. He's got a book coming up about the foie gras war....should be interesting.
Old Bill Byrne
December 4th - 8:38 p.m.
If anyone has the full list of who got laid off this time, please post it. I wish they'd just say who is gone.
Bill
December 4th - 8:54 p.m.
Thanks, John. Maybe he's prepping for the book tour.

When the San Francisco Chronicle first laid off a bunch of folks a year or so back, they established a good-bye blog on their main site -- where staff put memories for each person let go, be they reporter, photographer, editor, tech person, whomever, and let readers add comments. I thought it was a great idea -- they knew they were a part of the community where these folks had touched their readers, and they knew there were humans being affected by the layoffs, and they wanted to give colleagues and readers a place to celebrate those who served well. One of the few times where commenters remained respectful -- sure, the Chron took some hits, but no one slammed the folks who left, even those who were lightning rods with their work.
Lynn Voedisch
December 4th - 10:46 p.m.
Is John Anderson still there? I don't see his byline either, but maybe I haven't been paying attention.
Marshall
December 4th - 10:53 p.m.
Jon Anderson retired some time ago.
Michael Miner
December 4th - 11:54 p.m.
Other ther names I was given are reporters Courtney Flynn and
Deborah Horan, photographers
Milbert Brown and Jim Prisching, and assistant travel editor
Phil Marty. That's not the complete list.
Susan
December 5th - 5:55 a.m.
This is beyond sad. Sam Zell might be a wealthy man but he knows nothing about newspapers. His recent comments about Pulitzer Prizes and how they mean nothing highlights his ignorance. Chicagoans everywhere are sick about what he has done to this fine paper. Nice legacy, Sam.
Alan Solomon
December 5th - 10:17 a.m.
The list, as told to me: Neil Milbert, Courtney Flynn, Deb Horan, Rich Anderson, Phil Marty, Charlie Storch, Milbert Brown, Jim Prisching, Stevenson Swanson and Lisa Anderson. At least one of the above -- Phil Marty -- was voluntary. Add Mike Downey, from a couple of weeks earlier.
All were, and remain, quality people who will be missed -- none more than my onetime cubicle neighbor Mr. Storch, whose skills, integrity and work ethic were exemplary. Compared to Charlie, even when I was actually there I was just a cardboard cutout in a Hawaiian shirt.
Lynn Voedisch
December 5th - 2:10 p.m.
Thanks, Marshall. That explains it.
Lisa Holton
December 6th - 9:24 p.m.
I also competed against Charles Storch when I was at the Sun-Times. He was relentless in the pursuit of a story and a great writer -- in short, a terrific person to learn from. I really hope that the new media model --as Miner notes, to be funded by foundations and subscribers -- isn't ageist. There are still a lot of guys like Storch and other over-40 types who still have tremendous skills to offer American journalism and much to teach future generations of writers.
RMP
December 8th - 1:10 p.m.
It is just a matter of time. First home mortgages, than the banks, now car industry then the Tribune, next will be the Law Firms and the greedy ATTORNEYS WHO WILL FINALLY GET WHAT IS DUE THEM ALONG WITH THEIR ADMIN STAFF OF WITCHES.
Pvt. McCormick
December 9th - 11:07 a.m.
Please tell me that RMP's comment is the one that will get memorialized in the print edition. It nicely captures the zeitgeist, does it not?



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Harold, Daily by Harold Henderson

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Branzburg v. Hayes, the split U.S. Supreme Court decision (1972) generally construed by journalists and judges alike as affirming some sort of reporter's privilege in federal courts.

U.S. Appellate Judge Richard Posner's influential opinion in McKevitt v. Pallasch (2003) telling those journalists and judges they were wrong -- there is no such privilege.

John Milton's Areopagitica (1643), one of the earliest and most eloquent arguments for a free press. Said Milton: "As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye."

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