Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Media / News Bites The Law Bulletin Retrenches
Posted by Michael Miner on Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 2:26 PM
'Because of your work, our work has been enhanced and our profession enriched for 150 years,'' said Mary Ann G. McMorrow, the then chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, as she celebrated the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin's 150th anniversary with an array of other prominent lawyers and judges.
The date was November 18, 2004. Five years later to the day, the news editor of the Law Bulletin, Steve Brown, and assistant news editor Tim Doyle were laid off to cut costs. Brown had been there 18 years. In the interim there have been other cutbacks, notably the closing of the one-person Washington bureau two years ago.
This isn't a simple case of a venerable newspaper, after its night of nights, falling on hard times. Circulation's been ebbing for a decade or so, from about 8,000 to under 4,500 copies a day; but hard times are good for the Chicago legal community's newspaper of record, which is stuffed with foreclosure notices. But the Law Bulletin Publishing Company, run by the brothers Sandy and Brewster Macfarland, also has a string of real estate publications, and the collapse of the housing market did them no favors.
Olivia Clarke, who'd been assistant editor of the company's monthly Chicago Lawyer, whose own staff had shrunk dramatically in recent years, is now editor of both the Lawyer and the Law Bulletin — under executive editor Robert Yates and publisher Michael Kramer.
I asked Brown if he saw it coming.
"I didn't," he said. "I should have." A couple of months ago, he said, the company hired two part-time copy editors paid by the hour, one to work two days a week, the other three. It didn't occur to Brown that, in the eyes of upper management, these two part-timers made him expendable. "I thought they hired them because [Chicago Lawyer] was now being written by freelancers, and Olivia Clarke, who'd been a writer there, had taken over the editing responsibilities and needed help. I had no clue they were going to be cutting Tim and me."
The Law Bulletin still has six full-time reporters."It's easier to hire part-time copy editors and dump the most expensive people than to do without reporters," Brown can see now. "The biggest savings is to cut from the top."
I've tried to reach Kramer and the Macfarlands, but they haven't yet returned my calls.
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Michael, a very good story explaining the circumstances leading to these terminations. If your source is right, it shows a great deal of thought on the part of management to integrate the new staff and then cut the old staff.
It is frustrating to see Brown and Doyle laid off and my deepest sympathy is extended to them. I hope you bounce back very soon.
Yet, I am not angry with Kramer and the McFarlands. They've shown themselves to be ruthless but also smart. Remaining contractors and employees take note.
I was laid off by this company earlier this year. While I have respect for the great start the company gave me in the journalism industry, I have to wonder if there can be better ways to cut costs. When I was there, they had four company cars and a company condo. They own a six-story building, in which there's half a floor empty where the real estate people used to be and half a floor used just for storage. They also haven't done much to keep their website current or sell web ads, that I'm aware of.
I understand that cutting employees who have outgrown what the company can afford is sometimes necessary, but I wonder if there are more efficiencies you can create first.
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