Allen goes to ProPublica*

Former Pasadena Star-News reporter Marshall Allen, whose work at the Las Vegas Sun has made him a finalist for the 2011 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, has taken a job with ProPublica. Allen will start at the nonprofit news outfit next week. He'll continue covering health care to start.

*In addition: Former Pasadena Star-News reporter Cindy Chang was promoted to special projects writer at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Previously, she worked on the paper's city desk. In her new position, Chang "will be the lead author and coordinator" of the paper's investigative projects.

Twenty-one years after the Exxon Valdez

Former Pasadena Star-News reporter Cindy Chang traveled to the small fishing village of Cordova, Alaska for the Times-Picayune to survey the lasting damage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Residents there, whose lives and livelihoods were torn apart by the disaster and who can still find pools of oil inches below the surface of the ground, had some grim advice for the people living along the Gulf Coast:

Despite the pain of dredging up the past, most Cordovans are willing to share their stories with visitors. They volunteer advice to their Gulf Coast counterparts, with "Don't trust BP" the most common admonition.

"Don't believe anything the oil company says. They have huge PR departments whose job it is to minimize the collateral damage," said Mike Lytle, a Cordova fisherman. "I hope you have better luck than we did with the oil companies." ...

"A lot of lives are going to be affected. It'll never be the same. It'll take years and years to work through it," said Bruce Robertson, who has fished local waters for close to 30 years. "Nice families will be broken apart. Businesses will be lost. It's not going to be pretty."

Every tar ball is an opportunity

It's hard to find inspiration in the oily muck washing around the Gulf of Mexico, but BP is trying. The company has hired a pair of writers, dubbed "BP journalists," to find, as the New Orleans Times-Picayune puts it, the "silvery sheen in the dark cloud of oil."

Unlike most journalists, these "reporters" are not allergic to positive news when it comes to spinning a tragic event. Instead, BP's Paula Kolmar and Tom Seslar have removed the blinders of cynicism and honesty to wax poetic about the cleanup effort. Here's Kolmar on the gift the oil spill has given her:

I saw the skimmers. I saw the relief well drill ships. I saw the support vessels circling the incident site. It was indeed a sobering privilege.

Indeed, she goes on to talk about the "ballet at sea as mesmerising as any performance in a concert hall, and worthy of an audience in its own right." It's enough to make one wonder why Louisianans are having all the fun.

In his travels, Seslar has discovered that Gulf residents see their plight as merely a reflection of what BP is going through:

Paul, a well-spoken man supplementing his Social Security income by driving a Houston taxi, sees BP’s current image challenges as similar to what he faces all day long.

Haven't we all suffered the proverbial failure of our blowout preventer?

Ryan Chittum at Columbia Journalism Review has compiled even more of these paeans to gushing crude.

Parish president wants names*

The interim president of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans has sued to force the Times-Picayune to turn over the names of 11 people who posted comment anonymously on the paper's website. The comments seem pretty tame, but interim president Steve Theriot says they were were "made with malice, and a blatant, intentional disregard for the truth, and with the intent that such statements damage plaintiffs."

The full story is here.

*UPDATE: Turns out Theriot isn't trying to intimidate anyone - he just wants to help! From the T-P:

Jefferson Parish interim President Steve Theriot told the Parish Council today that the lawsuit he filed against anonymous users of www.NOLA.com is aimed at addressing the concerns they raise -- not to block criticism of the government.

"This is in no way to shut up anyone regarding their concerns about the operation of the government," Theriot said.

Journalism's top ten

NYU's journalism institute has listed its ten favorite stories of the decade. The New York Times' coverage of the 9/11 attack comes in first. The Times also makes the list for its reporting on the Afghanistan war and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx is the second pick.

This American Life's explanation of the subprime mortgage crisis, "The Giant Pool of Money," is in fourth place, with Jane Mayer's "The Dark Side" in sixth. The Times-Picayune gets eight place for its detailed coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

The full list is here.

Four in the morning*

1. New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin is one of the 70 or so news staffers who took a recent buyout, but he plans to continue his Dot Earth blog at the paper. CJR

2. Former Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Hymon says working for the government (he writes for the MTA) isn't any worse, and may be better, than working for a newspaper. Neon Tommy via LA Observed

3. David Carr at the New York Times writes that the Wall Street Journal's news coverage is taking a conservative turn under Rupert Murdoch's management, and the Wall Street Journal's editor in chief says the New York Times is just jealous. NYT and Poynter (*Update: Carr responds to the uproar via Twitter: Did not intend WSJ col. as purpose punch. Love WSJ, noticed political drift. Wrote what I saw. Not trying to pick fight or carry water.)

4. The new mantra for journalism is cooperation and, to that end, the New Orleans Times-Picayune has teamed up with ProPublica and Frontline to investigate questionable police shootings in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. ProPublica

Buyouts at the Star-Ledger

Yet another Newhouse newspaper has offered buyouts employees as a way to shrink the payroll. The Star-Ledger in New Jersey wants 50 people to "voluntarily" leave their jobs to avoid the possibility of layoffs, the New York Times reports.

Here's a portion of the memo from Publisher George Arwady:

Full-time, non-represented employees can apply to receive 2 weeks’ pay for every year of completed service, capped at 26 weeks’ pay, along with medical coverage for the severance period. The newspaper reserves the right to reject applications based upon business needs.

We sincerely hope that we meet our staffing goals through this voluntary buyout offer. If we do not, we will need to resort to other ways of reducing our employee costs, which could include involuntary layoffs.

The paper eliminated 150 positions through buyouts last year.

Elsewhere in the Newhouse chain (aka Advance Publications)...

The New Orleans Times-Picayune recently made all employees eligible for a buyout package equal to one year's salary.

The Oregonian's interim publisher released a buyout plan last month and hinted strongly that layoffs would follow if too few people took the offer. To wit: "If a significant number of you accept the offer it could minimize or eliminate the need for layoffs down the line." The interim publisher did not say how many jobs were on the line but set a deadline of November 9 for employees to accept a buyout.

Cuts, consolidation and reorganization at the Oregonian

With a buyout offer on the table and the specter of layoffs looming, the executive editor of the Oregonian newspaper yesterday released a memo - obtained by Oregon Media Central - that outlines a major restructuring of the paper's newsroom.

From the memo:

We are committed to the principles and values that have defined print journalism and will not shirk our responsibility to serve as a watchdog on government and the powerful. At the same time, we need to evolve our journalism, embrace the two-way nature of the Web world and be even more responsive to a public that expects more of a conversation with us.

-snip-

We will not abandon our foundation of beat reporting, but beats will be redefined along areas of expertise of most interest to our readers. Some beats will be eliminated because with fewer people we cannot cover everything that we have in the past.

The smaller newsroom will be split into two parts. The first, with between 60 and 70 staffers, will focus on "local expertise and enterprise reporting." The second, with about 40 reporters and editors, including interns, will focus on "community." There will also be an "editing and producing" hub that will endeavor to push stories out onto the web more quickly with fewer rigid deadlines. As with most newspaper cuts these days, the change also means fewer copy editors and designers to check quality. Again, from the memo:

We also need to streamline editing operations and simplify newspaper production since we will be losing many copy editors and designers. We must move toward “one-touch editing.”

In addition, all photographers and photo editors will need to be trained in both still and video.

The Oregonian is owned by the Newhouse family, which operates the paper through its Advance Publications company. Advance also runs Condé Nast Publications, which recently shuttered Gourmet and Portfolio magazines and which has made significant cuts to many of its other magazine operations. Advance newspapers include the New Orleans Times Picayune, Cleveland Plain Dealer and New Jersey Star-Ledger. The Times-Picayune recently offered buyouts to all employees.

No more guarantees

Newspaper employees in the Advance Publications chain had largely been shielded from layoffs, but the pink slips may soon be at their doors. Steve Newhouse, whose family owns the company, told employees today that Advance will no longer honor its "no-layoffs" pledge and warned that job cuts could hit in early 2010.

From Editor & Publisher:

"It was not a pledge that applied to the kind of transitional moment in the newspaper industry that is basically struggling to survive," [Newhouse] said, noting it only applied to the company's daily newspapers.

The end of the no-layoff pledge follows last year's string of buyouts at many Advance papers, including more than 200 at The Star-Ledger, as well as furloughs implemented at most of the dailies this year.

Advance publishes 20 newspapers, including The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.; The Oregonian in Portland, the Staten Island (N.Y.) Advance and The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

Links in the (late) afternoon

Chris Bray doesn't support re-inflating the burst economic bubble vigorously historiblogography

Where do journalists go after the layoffs/buyouts? AJR (via Romenesko)

NOTP reporter still waiting on public records... forty months later NOTP

Republican Rep. Gary Miller wants to fix college football Daily Californian, Frank Girardot

Like puppies, only not as cute New York Times