News

Baltimore Sun lays off baseball reporters – mid-game

From Guardian Unlimited
Four journalists from the Baltimore Sun discovered they were being laid off last night — in the middle of covering a baseball game.

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.

The move 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.

The cuts came as Baltimore Sun executives slashed 61 newsroom jobs — 27 per cent of the paper’s staff — as its parent organisation, the Tribune Company, tries to find its way out of $13 billion of debt and Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

Click here to read the Guardian‘s report in full


Click here for more sports journalism links