Last Blog On Earth

At least 20 staffers spent last night sleeping in the lobby of the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Mission Valley headquarters, determined not to miss their chance to take what are expected to be the final buyouts while the paper’s publisher, Copley Press, explores a sale. The U-T is offering 76 buyout opportunities (including 30 newsroom positions), which must be taken by Sept. 11. The staffers couldn’t or wouldn’t open the main doors to let me in, so I couldn’t speak with any of them. Still, they must really want those buyouts, which will be worth two weeks of pay for each year of continuous service, up to one year of pay.

To get the full image of what was going on last night, readers need to understand that the lobby of the U-T is kind of a dignified place. The room itself seems only slightly smaller than a Little League baseball diamond (with no outfield), and the center is taken up by a long, square, dark-wood reception counter. The carpet is deep blue, and the walls are covered in wood panels. On one side, there’s a list of the paper’s three Pulitzer Prizes (including the ones from its earlier incarnation as the San Diego Evening Tribune). Last night, staffers could be seen through the glass walls, scattered around the room like a slumber party for people who are really too old for that sort of thing. Many had sleeping bags or hastily constructed bedrolls of blankets and pillows. Some had found places among the tall potted plants, but others were still up, reading or knitting.

By 6:15 this morning, as the sky had just become light, the crew was entirely awake, their kits packed away. There seemed to be a certain esprit-de-corps among the lobby-sleepers: They’d lined up chairs near the main doors, and they sat chatting, reading or hunched over their laptops (preparing their resumes?). Clearly, they’d been up for some time, because someone had already gone out on a coffee and doughnut run. Someone at the back of the room appeared to be brushing her teeth.

Former Union-Tribune staffer Chet Barfield told me this morning that when he took a buyout last year, there was someone who stood in line at 4:30 a.m. the day the buyouts opened, and that by 5 a.m., there were “a couple of people.” But even he seemed surprised by the overnight camp-out. He also explained that the system rewards people who get there earlier. At 9 a.m., the group was probably ushered into an auditorium where their paperwork was time-stamped and collected. Each department at the paper was likely allocated a limited number of buyouts, and they will be distributed based on the order in which people applied. Of course, with 76 offered buyouts, the people who stayed the night are probably shoo-ins, assuming they weren’t all from the same department.

Barfield also noted that if you include last January’s layoffs, this is the fourth staff contraction at the paper since December 2006.

“Each time, each one of these actions is amputating part of the news staff,” he said. “We started with fingers and toes now we’re getting down to other appendages. With each one of these contractions, there’s less eyes and ears out there in San Diego, trying to find out what’s going on.”

By the way, I’d still love to talk to any of the U-T overnighters. If any of you are out there, drop me a line at ericw@sdcitybeat.com. After the jump, you can see the rest of my through-the-glass pictures.

Taking pics through glass is no easy trick with a point-and-shoot camera, so glean what you can from them.