Weekly update, Oct. 1: None of you could have escaped this week’s big news, the ouster of BANG-EB Publisher John Armstrong and the installment of David Rounds, a Mercury News circulation VP, to replace him.

Both the announcement and resulting coverage were surprisingly candid, with no pretense that Armstrong simply chose to retire. Instead, he told employees Tuesday, MediaNews simply felt that his “skill set” didn’t match the challenges ahead.

Here’s the Times’ own coverage, by reporter John Simerman, the AP’s version, and Editor and Publisher’s take.

Armstrong’s last day will be Oct. 17.

In the meantime, we’ve been Googling David Rounds, who does not seem to have any online pictures.

Our searches paused at this blast from the past — a 1999 AJR piece by reporter Cynthia Gorney that provides an amazing time capsule of the East Bay newspaper scene in its boom years:

“Slow down, John,” David Rounds said from the rear seat of the black Mercedes in which three of us, me and two mid-level officials of the Evil Empire, were driving around the back roads of Contra Costa County. Rounds, a tall pale-haired man whose long legs made him look somewhat cramped even in the back of such a fancy car, is vice president for circulation for the Contra Costa Newspapers. John Armstrong, who was driving, is editor of the Contra Costa papers, and as he slowed down Armstrong nodded for my benefit toward the hills that stretched out to either side of his car.
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David Rounds has been named the new publisher of the Bay Area News Group-East Bay, which includes the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune and dozens of other newspapers and Web sites.

Rounds, who will assume the role Oct. 17, has more than 35 years of newspaper experience, including long stints with both the former Alameda News Group and the former Contra Costa Newspapers. He currently serves as vice president of circulation at the San Jose Mercury News.

Rounds replaces longtime publisher John Armstrong, who leaves Oct. 17.

During a meeting in Walnut Creek Tuesday afternoon, Times employees gave Armstrong a long and steady round of applause.

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Sent on behalf of Mac Tully, September 30th, 2008

Dear Employees:

We’re announcing a leadership change for our East Bay newspapers. After many years of dedicated service, John Armstrong will be leaving the company effective October 17. We’re very appreciative of the effort that John has put forth during his role as Publisher, and earlier as Editor, and wish him good fortune for the future.

David Rounds, San Jose Mercury News Vice President of Circulation, will replace Armstrong as the new President and Publisher of our East Bay newspapers. David is a career newspaper professional with more than 35 years’ experience innewspaper advertising, (more…)

Hope you’re doing well. We’ve been pretty busy the last couple weeks as the
guild organizing effort has picked up steam. And if last week’s scary letter
home summarizing the recent roadshows was any indication, management
has been pretty busy too (5 grafs of gloom and doom; 11 grafs about the
dangers of joining the guild).

So newsroom layoffs are getting discussed here as a possibility. I figured that
would happen sooner or later, and we should expect the gloom and doom to
continue and worsen as weeks pass. It really could happen — could always
have happened, at any time — but we have no real way of knowing what the
company plans to do at this point.

Our industry is growing increasingly inhospitable, and not even a strong guild
can do a thing to prevent layoffs driven by economic necessity and change.
Don’t look here for that kind of protection. The guild can only help around the
edges – by negotiating for contract language that influences the layoff process,
such as advance notice, severance pay, rehire benefits and seniority.

One argument against the guild that we sometimes hear is that it cannot
guarantee that everyone will keep their jobs. But what kind of an argument is
that? Is the company promising no layoffs if we reject the guild? Doesn’t sound
that way to me. Right now they do whatever they feel they need to do, without
our input. If they feel they need to lay off some employees for whatever reason,
they will do it. Their decisions change with their business needs.

But I don’t think we can assume an inverse relationship between worker
compensation and the number of workers. The Bay Area is an important market
for MediaNews. There are several MediaNews papers around the country that
have negotiated excellent contracts (see Denver and St. Paul). We know that
times are hard, but corporate is still profiting from our labor. The question is
whether MediaNews would, if forced, invest more here. I don’t think there’s
enough information on the table to know. But I also know we’ll never find out
if we don’t explore our options.

LUNCH WITH THE BOSS (by Sara Steffens):

So, Karl, Mary and I had lunch Monday with John Armstrong and Kevin Keane.
None of us walked in expecting to change each other’s minds.

We were hoping to share our core goal, one we hope everyone will support:
To organize our newsroom in the most respectful, least divisive way possible,
without insulting our colleagues, our newspaper or its managers. We want to
bring people together, not tear them apart.

John and Kevin doubt this is possible. They already feel stung, they said, to
hear that we think our papers are getting worse, that our newsroom staffing
is suffering, that our managers have limited power in the face of the profit
expectations and business model of the MediaNews corporation.

If we trust them, they asked, why do we need a union?

It’s an interesting question, and one that gets to the heart of why we are all
doing this.

In my years at the Times, I’ve always jumped in headfirst to things I believe
are good for the paper, good for the community, and good for journalism.

In my early days at the paper, I started a little committee to find ways to
keep reporters from leaving for dot-coms. Radical stuff like offering free
cleaning supplies for our desks. I founded the Times’ annual school-supply
drive, and soon found myself personally lugging mountains of backpacks to
and fro. I signed on to help a reporter run a brown-bag writers’ group, and
when that group died, I signed on to help with the next one. I chaired a
strategic planning subcommittee on youth readership. I helped plan Chris
Lopez’s company Christmas party, lugging booze through a very miserable
rainstorm while several months pregnant.

Never before have I been accused of stepping up because I didn’t trust the
company to do the right thing. Always, my managers have understood what
I do: Good ideas come from all of us. Work gets done by those willing to do it.

Here’s how I see it: John and Kevin probably want better for us than what
MediaNews has offered. But just as I have no power to negotiate a lower
co-pay for my prescriptions, they have no power to convince the company
that the new health plan is a mistake – one of many small aggravations that
will over time drive away the talent we need to survive these turbulent times.

We like our managers. We want to help them do what’s right for us, and for
journalism.

EATIN’ CROW (by Karl Fischer):

I made an error last week in a message I wrote to you, the one responding
to the roadshow “scary letter” that got mailed home.

Both John Armstrong and another particularly savvy co-worker pointed it out
to me Monday. Here is the suspect sentence:

“While a guild cannot prevent layoffs if it really comes to that, a guild does
have extensive legal rights to information — they have to open the books –
and we can know better whether it really needs to come to that.”

That bit in the middle about opening the books is inaccurate. Even with a guild,
the company does not need to open its books — at least not completely — to
the guild. It would only need to do so if it claimed that financial hardship were
the reason they were unable to meet the guild’s economic demands, and that
typically does not happen.

The point I was trying to make was that the company does legally have to
provide information needed for the guild to bargain effectively. For example,
if there’s a takeaway proposal on the table, the guild can ask for relevant
information relating to the issue. What is relevant and how much information
must be given are sometimes points of contention, but at least the guild has
rights to more information when bargaining than non-union employees do
when trying to cut their own deals individually.

In the near future I’ll send out some examples of the kinds of information
some local guilds have requested recently during contract talks, along with
more discussion about how the bargaining process works.

LUNCH REDUX II (by Sara):

Any of you frightened by the letters mailed to your homes last week may be
relieved by John’s clarification on Monday, supplied to us at lunch.

The paragraph on potential layoffs, he said, just happened to directly precede
the 11 following paragraphs on the “unfortunate” aspects of our organizing
effort. John assured us, on the record, that any determination of whether to
pursue layoffs will have nothing to do with whether the newsroom chooses to
organize.

In other words: what’s going to happen is going to happen. The question then
becomes: in these uncertain times, will we benefit from a legal structure that
represents our interests as employees and journalists?

Obviously, we think the answer is “yes.”

For the record, John also was offended by our characterization of the letter as
a scare tactic. He told us he didn’t mean to scare you, or your families.

ONE BIG BANG IS ONLINE:

Check out our retooled web site at onebigbang.org. We hope you’ll find the new
content more useful, particularly for those of us at the Contra Costa papers.

We plan to add photos, messages from your co-workers and news about the
organizing drive every week, all written by people you know. We’d like the
site to become a place for nuts-and-bolts answers and we think we’re off to a
pretty good start. Let us know what you think…

Keep an eye out for the anonymous salary survey, which we hope will go live
in about a week. I hope you will participate, because we in the newsroom have
never had a good grasp of relative compensation at the Contra Costa papers —
how much money people who do what you do should expect to earn. Informally,
we’re finding that salaries are all over the map.

JOIN US (by Karl):

If you’re feeling especially brave today, go see Sara Steffens (or me) for a
“Go Guild” button. Then wear it at work.

Nothing bad happens to people who do this. I know, I’ve worn one. It’s allowed,
and if management were to bug you about it, you would want to let us know
immediately.

If you’re feeling less brave but still want to help, you can always do something
small but important like forwarding this message along (on personal email
accounts) to your friends who don’t now get this update, or getting their email
addresses to pass along to me. Just a hair fewer than half of guild-eligible CCT
employees are on my list, in large part because you folks actually do this every
week. So thank you, lots. But we still need more help.

If you’re interested in talking, or if you have specific questions, call or write me
or Sara.

And if you’d like to see what we’re doing up close, we’re always happy to see
you at our 10 a.m. Saturday meetings at the Media Workers Hall, 1831 Park
Boulevard in Oakland.

ARTIE’S (by Karl):

I will be drinking at Artie’s, the bar over in the Countrywood Shopping Center
in Walnut Creek, for the next few Friday nights starting around 11 p.m. I’d like
to have a beer with anyone who’d like to come by, particularly desk and sports
people who want to know more about the guild but haven’t gotten a chance to
talk with organizers because of our differing shifts.

So come out, and tell your friends.

CAL J-SCHOOL, THE FUTURE OF THE NEWSROOM, 2/20:

Anyone with time should check out a discussion February 20 at UC Berkeley,
“The Future of the Newsroom: New opportunities, collateral damage, and effects
on journalists in the digital era.”

The event, presented by the journalism grad school, runs from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
at North Gate Hall, Room 105. It’s free. Here’s a description by the J-School:

“Everyone is talking about the future of the newsroom in this new digital world
where young people get their news from YouTube and Facebook, and traditional
print journalists have seen hundreds of their brethren laid off or bought out.
Join us for a discussion of how these changes are affecting journalists. What can
media workers unions do? Should journalists hurry up and learn how to blog and
podcast before its too late?”

Speakers include Salon.com managing editor Jeanne Carstensen, California Media
Project director Louis Freedberg, San Jose Mercury News guild rep Luther Jackson,
and Matt Mansfield, deputy managing editor at the Merc.

Thanks!

Karl Fischer
Sara Steffens