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I believe that all of the following took buyouts: Vanessa Bauza, Joe Sjostrom,Jack Pointer, Therese Kwiatkowski, Barbara Rose, Richard Phillips, Kirsten Scharnberg, David Mendell, Dan Gibbard, Ernie Torriero, Wendy White, Hung Vu, Marsha Peters, Brenda Kilianski, Barry Temkin, Alan Sutton, Mark Sharpiro Shapiro, Heather Stone, John Schmeltzer, and Glenn Jeffers. Another considerable loss was that of Nannette Smith, longtime secretary in the features department.
"The Seeker," the blog of Tribune religion writer Manya Brachear, offers the additional name of Nancy Stuermer. Brachear reflects on the layoffs, and she's asked prominent Chicago clergy to speak to "the victims and the vulnerable and the insecure" (Martin Marty's phrase) about the "rupture in self-definition" -- as Rabbi Ellen Dreyfus puts it -- they have just experienced. Having gone through the experience once myself at the Sun-Times, I salute the rabbi on her language.
Of the above former Tribune journalists I'm going to single out Kirsten Scharnberg. A friend who admires her sent me a link to this story about her written a few years ago for her alma mater. As you'll see, she was embedded with the 101st Airborne during the 2003 invasion of Iraq."Wouldn't even trade a hot shower for it," she said during the assignment.
The true victims, vulnerable and insecure of the world have little, if any sympathy for this situation.
Please list these people here.
I got a journalism major, though it was in the course of getting that major that I self-determined I didn't have the right mindset to be a good journalist, so my career took me elsewhere.
Still, I remained addicted to news print for a long time and then, over the past decade, addicted to reading the news from many different sources online.
It's disheartening to see the list of people who took the buy-out or were laid off. The Trib will be a lesser paper (as is the Sun-Times).
As one who increasingly read the paper online rather than paying 50 cents for it over the last decade, I'm part of the problem, but I'm also part of the solution. My desire for news -- reported honestly and written well -- hasn't abated. The newspapers' business model obviously needed to change, but at the expense of so much talent -- such a waste.
As with the luvvies of the theater world whose places of work "go dark" rather than shut because nobody wants to watch their gorawful productions, so it is that journos are equally full of self-importance.
And what's your opinion of African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, Jews, women, gays and lesbians--as if we didn't already know?
And do you get a hardon every time you watch your idol Loofah Felafel or your other idol Rush Vicodin?
Just so you know... The term 'luvvie' already existed as a derogatory noun for pretentious, overblown, narcissistic people of an artistic or dramatic bent.
Here, this may help you:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Luvvies