No bottled water under the Sun

Perhaps there are environmental factors behind this, but the decision to end water-cooler service at the San Bernardino Sun feels like a cost-savings move. Here's note to staffers:

Effective Thursday, August 11th we will be discontinuing the bottled water service at The Sun’s business office and production plant.  Just a reminder that we do have water fountains on both floors of both buildings.  Please use the water faucets in the break rooms for making coffee if there is not already a faucet located at your coffee station.

It's a time of belt-tightening everywhere. Santa Monica College, which owns the offices where I work, just gave up Sparkletts for Arrowhead, as a way to save money.

Sun newsroom says 'no' to union

I'm told newsroom employees at the San Bernardino Sun have rejected an effort to form a union at the MediaNews Group-owned newspaper. The vote was 12 to 2 against.

When the union election was set, 17 people were eligible to cast ballots. I'm told two people have since left and one ballot was challenged - an action that won't change the outcome.

Date set for San Bernardino Sun union election

Newsroom employees at the San Bernardino Sun will decide on July 7 whether to establish a union. The National Labor Relations Board has identified 17 employees as eligible to vote in the election. Senior Editor Kim Guimarin sent two memos (here and here) outlining the process and making clear that management does not want the newsroom to unionize. From the memo:

As we have shared, during the next five weeks there will be a series of informational meetings during which you will learn more about the process, i.e., voting procedures, union representation, and the union itself, the collective bargaining process, and why it is in your best interest as well as the Sun's to cast a ballot on June 7 and vote NO.

The Sun is owned by the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, a division of Denver-based MediaNews Group.

Shop talk at the San Bernardino Sun

Reporters have begun organizing a union effort at the San Bernardino Sun, two sources tell me. This means contacting union representatives and circulating cards for an election. I don't know how far along they've gotten, but LANG, the paper's owner, has taken notice. At least two executives talked to management at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the Sun's sister paper, about how a bad union would be. More when I hear it...

AOL Patch continues to hire

The AOL Patch network of city blogs continues to expand in Southern California.

Redmond Carolipio, formerly night editor at the San Bernardino Sun, will take over as assistant regional editor for San Gabriel Valley Patch sites.

Melanie Johnson, who got laid off from the Press-Enterprise in Riverside and was a former Sun reporter, will edit the city of Walnut and City of Industry patch sites - expect a good deal of news about Ed Roski Jr.'s planned football stadium project.

Gina Tenorio, who worked at the Desert Sun in Palm Springs, will become editor of the Loma Linda Patch.

Apparently, AOL wants these two Patch sites up and running by Dec. 13.

LANG likes Facebook, readers not so sure (updated)

Back in October, San Bernardino Sun editor Frank Pine sent around a memo saying the nine papers that make up the Los Angeles Newspaper Group chain would be dropping their Topix commenting system for one that interfaces with Facebook accounts. One of the primary reasons for the change was to chase off trolls, who, shielded by anonymity, often veered in racist invective and personal attack - even when stories had nothing to do with race or a particular person.

The new system requires readers to be logged into Facebook and comments are by default linked to the person's page. This transparency (Facebook's privacy critics might laugh at the word) is supposed to create an environment where comments follow a socially correct etiquette, the argument goes.

The changeover happened on Friday, Dec. 3, with all nine papers publishing an online story describing the system and soliciting feedback. So far, most of the responses have been negative, with readers decrying the loss of anonymity, which they say allows for more honest viewpoints, and criticizing the papers for putting "civility" ahead of free and open debate.

A few readers warned that trolls would simply create fake Facebook accounts and return with the same aggressive madness. Some readers worried about their own privacy, saying they didn't like that comments were automatically posted to their Facebook pages. A few readers said they liked the new system and hoped it would make for more civil discussions.

Change always comes hard in the daily newspaper world. Take away a comic strip and you're likely to swamp every department with cranky phone calls - the kind of reaction news editors would love to come in response to, say, actual news. Still, there are interesting questions surrounding anonymous posts and the question of when an opinion become unacceptable as well as the thought of newspapers aligning themselves with Facebook's private profit machine to promote a kind of civility.

Below, I've rounded up a few of the comments that came in over the weekend.

From an unhappy reader in the Whittier Daily News:

I feel the lack of anonymity restricts the truth, people are more inclined to say what they think when they're not being monitored by a moderator. Sure most of the remarks were rude and bigoted, but some stated hardcore facts and relevance to the post.

A dubious Pasadena Star-News reader:

The anonymous comments were the best part of this paper. 

Compared to the Glendale News Press which requires comments to be approved, Star News had a lively conversation.

1. Why do conversations about the news need to be "civil?"

2. Thanks for defining civility for us all.

Good luck with this.

 An aggressive rejection in the LA Daily News:

I will never participate in your comments again. "Civil" means repression in this context and I will stop reading your FUCKING SWILL. 

 The San Bernardino Sun had a few positive comments, like this one:

I think the new Facebook-based comment feature for The Sun, Daily Facts, and Daily Bulletin is great. The public comment feature on too many online news outlets have been overrun by immature, offensive, and asinine comments from users protected by anonymity.

One Inland Valley Daily Bulletin reader sees a conspiracy:

The Daily Bulletin sold out! This is just a move to protect corrupt politicians and their Shady developer Godfathers. Nothing is worse than when they steal from the tax payers, name libraries after themselves and then have to hear the negative comments of the victimized public. Although alot of mud slinging whent on in the old style of posting, at least it was an open public forum that people could use to express their true sentiments and beliefes , good or bad. This new method of traceable commenting and a lack of true public input will only mean that the cancer of corruption will choke up the wheels of justice and crush the common citizen. Good luck to us all.

Even more Patch work

AOL Patch sites continue to stand itself up in Southern California. The online news network has hired Rich Kane, a former managing editor of the OC Weekly, to cover Laguna Beach.

Patch has also picked up Aldrin Brown, former city editor at the San Bernardino Sun, to oversee the network's San Bernardino-area sites. This confirms the rumors I heard last month, when Brown first departed.

Speaking of SB County, I'm told Redlands - home to leafy trees, a university, decent schools and desirable homes - will remain the battlefield of choice for ad starved news orgs. AOL plans to launch a site there, while the Press-Enterprise and the Redlands Daily Facts, owned by Belo and MediaNews Group, respectively, continue to clash on the newspaper side. The P-E has pulled back coverage in the rest of the county.

Comings and goings*

I'm told Aldrin Brown, city editor for the San Bernardino Sun, has decided to leave his job. Rumor is he's going to work for AOL's Patch, though I haven't been able to confirm this.

On the national side, Peter Orzag, heart breaker and former director of the office of management and budget, will be writing a column for the New York Times.

*Update: Newsweek's business and economics columnist, Dan Gross, is the latest to leave the magazine. Gross is moving over to Yahoo Finance, the Business Insider reports.

Comings and goings

From Gorkana:

Pat Maio has joined the North County Times as an Economics Reporter, where he’ll also cover agriculture, financial services, tourism and small business. He was most recently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California. He has also held reporting jobs for Dow Jones Newswires, the Financial Times Group, the San Bernardino Sun and Desert Sun, among others.

More moves in LANGland

Frank Pine has been named the new general manager of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Pine already served as executive editor of the Bulletin, a role he'll continue, and is executive editor of the Bulletin's sister paper, the San Bernardino Sun.

Pine replaces Peggy Del Torro, who took over as general manager of the Redlands Daily Facts.

Local papers see circulations drop*

Newspapers across Southern California saw substantial drops in daily circulation over the last six months, according to the most recent Audit Bureau of Circulations report.

The region's largest paper, the Los Angeles Times, lost 11.1 percent of its weekday circulation between April and September. The paper now sells an average of 657,467 papers a day during the week.

Dean Singleton's LANG papers lost circulation as well, the Times reports. Circulation at the flagship Daily News in Woodland Hills plunged 26% to 95,938. The paper has had several rounds of buyouts and layoffs and, as a result, has shifted focus away from Los Angeles to concentrate on cities in the San Fernando Valley.

The Pasadena Star-News fell 5.3 percent to 24,362. The Long Beach Press-Telegram dropped 8.2% to 71,411 and the Daily Breeze in Torrance 2.7%, giving it a circulation of 61,925*.

Singleton's Inland Empire papers - also part of LANG - experienced similar drops, the Press-Enterprise reports. Weekday circulation at the San Bernardino Sun and the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin dropped 9.4 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively. The Sun now sells an average of 47,015 papers a day during the week and the Bulletin averages 48,014. The Sun lost 6.4 percent of its Sunday circulation and the Bulletin lost 2.9 percent.

The Belo-owned Riverside Press-Enterprise experienced the biggest decline in the Inland Empire, with circulation falling 24.3 percent on weekdays for an average of 113,182 copies sold. Sunday circulation was down 23.3 percent. Contributing to the losses were several rounds of staff cuts in the last year and the paper's decision to end delivery services in parts of San Bernardino County.

Out east, weekday circulation at the Desert Sun in Palm Springs decreased 11.6 percent to 36,207 papers. The Gannett-owned paper cut staff last year and instituted furloughs this year.

The Orange County Register's weekday circulation slipped 10.1 percent to 212,293; the Register's parent company, Freedom Communications, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month.

The San Diego Union-Tribune, which suffered major staff cuts shortly after it was bought by Beverly Hills-based Platinum Equity, dropped 10% to 242,705.

Nationally, newspapers lost an average of 10.6 percent of their circulation, according to ABC.

*I have yet to come across circulation numbers for the Whittier Daily News and San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

*Updated: Finally saw a list of all the papers. The San Gabriel Valley Tribune saw its weekday circulation fall to 33,387 papers a day from 37,594, an 11 percent drop. The Whittier Daily News fell 13,076 from 14,563, a decline of 10 percent.

A small sliver of silver lining: The Pasadena Star-News saw a 1 percent increase in Sunday circulation and the Whittier Daily News saw a 2 percent increase.

Four in the evening

1. Oberjuerge overseas: Former San Bernardino Sun sports reporter Paul Oberjuerge has finally found job in print - in Abu Dhabi. Oberjuerge will work on the Revise Desk for The National, a newspaper funded by the United Arab Emirates government. The paper certainly pays well and all earnings are tax free. Oberjuerge

2. Premature publication: Nick Denton of Gawker sent a memo encouraging his writers to publish first and to confirm later. The Awl

3. Transcontinental press: A look at what the New York Times' inaugural Bay Area edition looks like. Nieman Journalism Lab

4. The public option: NPR releases social media guidelines for its journalists. NPR

Jim Long was 46

Jim Long, who worked as a sports writer for the Victorville Daily Press and San Bernardino Sun, died on Thursday at Kaiser Hospital in Fontana. He was 46.

Paul Oberjuerge, one of Long's former colleagues, remembers Long and his career:

He never in his life had what most of us would consider an “easy” day. He was born with Type 1 diabetes and palsy, suffered from lung cancer in his 30s (and lost half a lung) … and then battled strokes and cancer, again, over the past two years.

Yet he accomplished as much as most of us who have none of the issues he dealt with, and he never once complained, in my presence, about how he had been dealt a bad hand. In fact, he fought Mother Nature to a standstill for nearly 45 years, entered a profession for which he was perfectly suited, succeeded in it and, eventually, became the sports authority for the huge tract of territory (stretching from Hesperia to Baker) known as the High Desert — the San Bernardino County side of it, anyway.

He was mentally tough, impossible to intimidate, a good writer, an excellent researcher — and fully committed to the idea of print journalism, which he loved.

He was my first hire. He was one of my best hires, as well. He took himself and his job seriously and was utterly loyal to the newspaper and the San Bernardino Sun sports section. He never considered any assignment beneath his dignity. He covered preps, local colleges, California League baseball — and even some “downtown” events — and brought the same enthusiasm to all those assignments.

Oberjuerge says he'll update his post when the funeral arrangements and cause of death become known. The full post is here.

Meanwhile, in San Berdoo...

Bill Postmus, former assessor for San Bernardino County, pleaded not guilty yesterday to nine felony counts and one misdemeanor charge, including grand theft, misuse of public funds and perjury. Postmus, 38, and a handful of his lieutenants have been accused of running a private political shop out of the assessor's office while on the public payroll.

Duane Gang, politics reporter for the Press-Enterprise, was on "Which Way, LA?" yesterday to talk about what this means for the county and for the county's Republican Party, of which Postmus was a prominent and influential member.

The P-E also reports that Postmus on Wednesday described the District Attorney is "sex-obsessed" for including detalis of his sex life in investigative documents. At least one of Board of Supervisors appears to have picked up the line of thought. On Thursday, Supervisor Neil Derry called for an investigation of DA Mike Ramos for alleged "improper relationships with female subordinates and colleagues." This gave Postmus the chance to respond with yet another press statement.

Maybe just a coincidence, but one of the men charged in connection with the Postmus investigation is Jim Irwin, Derry's former chief of staff.

Circulation down in the IE

Daily newspapers covering the Inland Empire saw significant declines in circulation over the last six months, according to the latest ABC survey. The Riverside Press-Enterprise dropped 14.6 percent, putting the Monday through Friday circulation at 140,079 and the Sunday circulation at 147,339.

The P-E, which has suffered several rounds of layoffs in recent weeks, touted a 5-percent gain in its "total audience" share, which includes online readers.

The Press-Enterprise also reported drops in circulation for its main competitors, but did not include any online-audience numbers in the story. From the P-E:

The San Bernardino Sun, owned by Media News Group, saw circulation decline 8 percent to 49,952 Monday through Friday and 3.4 percent to 55,746 on Sunday.

The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the Media News paper in Ontario, dropped 9.1 percent to 48,954 weekdays and 10.8 percent to 52,616 on Sunday.

Redlands Daily Facts, also owned by Media News, dropped 2.5 percent to 6,916 weekdays and 2 percent to 7,012 Sundays.

I haven't seen numbers for the rest of LANG yet.

The average drop in print circulation nationwide was 7.1 percent.

Sun is hiring

The San Bernardino Sun is hiring a political reporter, presumably to help fill a gap left by Metro Editor George Watson, who is leaving to become chief of staff to a SB County Supervisor. The job description calls for someone who can break state and national news while "developing enterprise and investigative lines of reporting on the local impact of government actions in Sacramento and Washington, D.C." while "reporting on local governments (city and county) in collaboration with reporters assigned to those beats."

Sun metro editor takes a government job

San Bernardino Sun Metro Editor George Watson has agreed to take a job as chief of staff for San Bernardino County Supervisor Neil Derry. The Board of Supervisors still has to vote on the appointment to make it official.

The position opened up last week when Derry's previous chief of staff, Jim Irwin, got himself arrested for allegedly lying about a trip he took to New York courtesy of a Rancho Cucamonga housing developer who was trying to make nice with board. While in New York, the developer lavished Irwin with gifts - a Rolex watch, fancy meals, prostitutes. Irwin allegedly lied about those as well.

Derry had kind things to say about Watson, who's currently on leave from the Sun:

"George is a top-tier individual," Derry said. "He's ethical. He's highly educated. He's professional. He works very hard. I think he will be a tremendous asset to not only the third district, but the county as a whole."

P-E takes from Sun

Despite recent layoffs, the Press-Enterprise in Riverside managed to lure two journalists over from the San Bernardino Sun in recent days: prep sports reporter John "Prep Dog" Murphy and senior editor Louis Amestoy.

Comings and goings*, **

Long Beach Press-Telegram reporter Samantha Gonzaga gave her two-weeks notice yesterday. She plans to study urban planning at Cal Poly Pomona, according to the Stress Telegram.

I'm told San Bernardino Sun reporter Robert Rogers is leaving his job also to attend grad school. He covered social and economic issues for the newspaper.

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune added a couple reporters last week, Rebecca Kimitch and Daniel Tedford.

*UPDATE: Three more reporters exit the shrinking Press-Enterprise, the iepapers blog reports.

**UPDATE: Rogers says goodbye to readers on the SB Now blog. (Thanks to a commenter for passing this along.)

As the Sun turns

The latest former San Bernardino Sun reporter to be profiled in Paul Oberjuerge's periodically updated "Seasons in the Sun" series is Nate Ryan '98, now a sports writer at USA Today:

I’ve known some very good journalists. But I don’t think I would want to share a beer — let alone a confidence — with most of them. There’s just something about the profession, especially the reporting side. To really get ahead requires selfishness, a willingness to use/betray sources and colleagues, and a keen eye for self-promotion. Actually, some of the best journos are almost sociopathic.

Then there is Nate Ryan, who has managed the fairly rare feat of being a good guy and a good journalist and reporter.

Is there any higher praise in this business than 'not a sociopath'? Read the rest of the post here.