Buyouts

With the Star Tribune possibly within two weeks of filing bankruptcy (according to newsroom Guild sources), we’re seeing yet another wave of big-name departures at the Strib: columnist Katherine Kersten, online managing editor Will Tacy and web designer Jaime Chismar, among others. But curiously, if you’re on the microblogging service Twitter, you might get the [...]

MinnPost’s David Brauer, who has documented the financial woes at the Star Tribune better than anyone, writes that a memo went out at the paper today revealing that the paper’s conservative and liberal columnists, Katherine Kersten and Nick Coleman, may be losing their columns. Both can keep jobs at the paper as reporters. Brauer writes, [...]

Ninety-seven seconds before midnight on March 10, Star Tribune sportswriter Steve Aschburner e-mailed his managers telling them he wanted to take a voluntary buyout of his contract. He was on the road, covering a Timberwolves game in Atlanta, and his decision came at the very end of a five-day window in which employees could choose [...]

In a joint email to staff at the Star Tribune, managing editor Scott Gillespie and editor Nancy Barnes revealed that 24 newsroom employees would take voluntary buyouts. Their email read:
We wanted you to know that 24 employees have decided to take advantage of the dismissal pay provision in the contract and resign from the Star [...]

When buyouts are announced next week at the Star Tribune, the list is likely to include names of several long-serving staffers who are approaching retirement (columnist Al Sicherman and reporter Bob Franklin, to name two). But one surprise, confirmed on Wednesday, will be that of veteran political reporter Dane Smith. A 20-year fixture at the [...]

The abrupt sale of the Minneapolis Star Tribune to Avista Capital Partners the day after Christmas left many of the paper’s employees wondering how soon they’d be shown the door. But a little-known clause in the paper’s contract with union journalists suggests that its employees might have good reason to look for the door — [...]