Brandon has just painted his own bull's eye. Fargo hates any and all unions. The fact that the DNT turns a profit is all that matters to them. Don't get me wrong- I totally support the guild, but Fargo is Fargo and you guys are screwed!

While I support the staff of the DNT, and can see where you're coming from, it's hard for me to see that the paper has any life in it.  To me, as a reader, it's circling the drain.  It's now just a few sheets of paper with very little content in it (due I'm sure to the cuts in staffing).

While I don't know the stats, I find it hard to believe that any print newspaper in the country is increasing it's readership numbers at this point.  Print papers themselves are giving way to the internet (as are many other things, including the US Mail).

My point: while I support your efforts, if it were me, I'd be looking for a new place of employment...

I sometimes think the DNT's Fargo management honestly doesn't give a rat's ass about the DNT, and is actively hostile to the Duluth region. I actually think a paper could be profitable, not make a ton of money mind you, and should be managed and owned locally. 

If it was at all possible I'd actually advocate that everyone left at the DNT just quit. It's only a matter of time before Fargo closes it down at this point.

Sara Horner has been a diligent and critical investigator of education news.  This is a substantial loss for the paper and for the community.

Nonprofit alternative dailies will not do the job even the DNT is doing now.  You can't get the type of work reporters like Brandon Stahl does from people who are doing it for free, for very low pay or doing it on top of other jobs and responsibilities.  I'm sorry, but nonprofit alternative dailies will not be the answer.  The Duluth Citizen is a joke and the DuSu is in the same class.  It's one thing to have blog/news sites like the Citizen/DuSu and another to have an organization filled with people trained and ready to be able to retrieve information, do it accurately and objectively and turn that information on a dime into a news report.  How many people representing the Duluth Citizen/DuSu are present at major news conferences in the city, big-time athletic events, breaking news stories and other news making events?  How much of their copy on these sites comes from the DNT?  You may not like what's in front of you now, but the DNT continues to be the best source for local news.

The union should make an offer to buy the DNT.

Brandon, maybe you should have used your own journalistic integrity and given the whole story.  It's no secret that the entire company has made this sacrifice including the DNT's own management and other local papers.  They are joining a multitude of others in the Duluth Superior area that have not had raises or a 401(k) match.  You should have also written about how the Guild didn't even let every Guild covered employee vote because they don't pay dues to the Guild.  Talk about fairness.  Why does the Guild believe they should be treated better than anyone else?  Brandon, you are just showing your inexperience and immaturity.  There are a lot of people in this fine region that would love to have your job, but all you do is whine.  You are right about one thing.  Sarah Horner is a great loss to your seniority rule.  I would rather have seen you be let go than her.  Keep bashing your own employer, so businesses and readers stop paying your salary.  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Derek...sounds like that union situation at the DNT worked in your best interest?  I'm assuming you were laid off because you were in the union but lowest on the ladder? How much did you spend in union dues while you were there?  Did you get what you paid for?  I work for a local employer and as a senior union member with plenty of young people below me, who are just starting out, I'd be MORE than willing to forgo ANY raise to keep my union membership strong. Win the battle or the war??

Of course my lack of monetary support for the DNT may play a role in the demise of employment at the DNT, but I was under the impression that in America the best way to voice your opinion now is to speak with your wallet. When their corporate ownership started to support political candidates that I wasn't interested in, my wallet went back into my pocket. Especially when they started to lay off talented employees who brang substance to the paper that made it worth my money. So to support a paper purely because it is local is stupid IMO. You can get your local news on your televison albeit it may not be what you are looking for....  Also where do you get off assuming that the layoffs would have happened years ago. Unless of course you run the books for the DNT that is. I don't know if you are referring to the Ripsaw when you discuss the alternative daily that the Brewhouse/BU brought about, but you are crazy if you think they were the only supporters.

Derek,
A George Foreman grill?  That's f$@#in hilarious!  Thanks for the levity.  BTW  Miss your photos in the paper.

OK.  Going back to your original post.  If you wish there was another rag then step up and do a better job.  If you don't want to support the DNT don't bitch when they have layoffs.

But Brandon, let's not forget that the union has (from my perspective, at least) a few flaws of its own. The seniority system protects the codgers, one of whom doesn't really believe in this whole "Internet" thing and several others who could justifiably be accused of phoning it in. It's the ambitious, adaptive, reporters like Sarah - the ones who have something to prove because they don't have a 20-year career behind them - who suffer. New reporters make no money and they're the first to go when financial trouble hits. The way I see it, the union isn't a lot of help in that regard.

Thanks Biff!

Will, I'll be the first to tell you that I don't agree with everything the union does or has done in this situation. I was the only member of the executive board to vote to accept the concessions, doing so on faith that the company would provide a temporary reprieve from layoffs. When it was brought to the entire union, I also voted again to accept the concessions, but the union overwhelming voted to reject them -- a vote I have to accept. While I didn't agree with the union, I certainly don't agree that the best response to the vote is to lay off more workers rather than to continue to negotiate. 

Also, after business reporter Andy Greder put in his two week notice yesterday (a position I don't expect to be filled, though I hope I am proven wrong) I am now at the bottom of the seniority list. Meaning, if another reporter is laid off, it will be me. So the above commenter will get his wish. And oh what happy days that will be -- a family struggling to pay the mortgage and bills, provide for a child, etc. If you're lucky, Joe F, a young family will be forced to leave Duluth. 

But there are upsides to being in the union, namely the above post. It was posted as a union member as a union activity, which is why I believe it protects me from company retribution. If I weren't part of a union, my lips would be sealed on this. It was posted in hopes that it would jolt the company from the course it's been on. The union has largely sat silent through the layoffs and attrition (we've lost far, far more journalists due to positions not being filled than to layoffs. The last time a hire was made in the newsroom was, I believe, two years ago). The course of silence got us nowhere. Perhaps getting the word out to the community will spur the company to talk and work with us in the future to prevent layoffs and to start rebuilding the quality of the paper.

I wouldn't cheer anyone's job loss, but she was just doing PR for Keith Dixon, which is typical of the DNT's suck-up-to-the-powers-that-be mode. They might as well just print the school district's press releases.

I've been reading papers from the 1970s, and it is astonishing how much more news-filled they are than the DNT today. Calm, matter-of-fact headlines introduce calm, matter-of-fact stories about things going on in the community.

I think a new daily in Duluth might be able to compete against the DNT if a small group of people decided to return to the basics of journalism and put out an information-packed product. 

The basics of journalism mean that you attend every public meeting you can and report on them. Then you follow up on all the leads you picked up and write more stories. And so on. If you have six or eight people doing this, you'll have a lot of stories.

Today, the vast majority of such meetings go by completely unnoticed by the media. 

To sell it, I think you'd have to keep your stories off the Web, or maybe only post a couple of teaser stories each day to encourage people to subscribe to the print edition. If people valued quality news arriving on their doorstep, they would subscribe.

And therein lies the greatest risk: Do people value quality news? I go back and forth on this. Sometimes I think yes, sometimes no. If people don't value it enough to subscribe, you're screwed. If they do value it, you could beat the DNT all around the block——no historical debt to pay off, no big building to maintain, a much smaller core of employees to pay, etc.

But surely people would respond if a competing daily newspaper suddenly appeared with content that was superior to the content of the DNT. Wouldn't they?

I would respond immediately--I MISS having as local, print newspaper on my breakfast table every morning. I miss it, I miss it, I miss it. I want one that is a NEWSpaper with calm, well researched stories about community-related news.

As a laid off DNT reporter (was laid off with Derek), having thought in depth about these issues, I'll summarize briefly what I think the crux of the problem is. Thanks to Brandon for his gutsy willingness to voice this tough issue. It cracks me up that some people on this thread hide behind anonymity. I consider anonymous comments worthless, unless you're posting something that might get you fired. I also worry that Forum will make Brandon's life hell for posting this. They've already gone after people who dared speak out against them.

1. The world is changing, and it is rearranging and perhaps eliminating traditional newspapers. Forum and the DNT are simply swept up in that.

2. Forum obviously wants to milk the DNT while it's still a money maker, and therefore is going to do all it can to do that. They're thinking (in my opinion), there is no tomorrow, so let's make the most of what we have. And since union scale wages are better than a similarly sized paper elsewhere (I know, because I've lived it) I assume Forum thinks the DNT shouldn't cost them any more than Fargo's newsroom, for better or worse. I've long felt some union members think that Fargo hates each union leader, and that everything's personal. I certainly think there is that element, but at the end of the day, Fargo cares about the money, and little else. 

3. Just for the record, per capita, I'm sure the DNT's newsroom has been hit harder than most newspapers, and even most other departments within the DNT.

Will,

Codgers? Phoning it in? The three most senior DNT writers are Kevin Pates, Mark Stodgill and Sam Cook -- with a combined tenure of nearly 100 years at the DNT -- and arguably the most productive writers on staff (and ones who didn't bail when greener pastures beckoned).

Mudd, I have the utmost respect for those three reporters you mentioned. They aren't who I was referring to. In any regard, I may have overstated my case a little. While I am free to have my own opinion, it's just that - an opinion.

I remember when Pia Lopez was editorial page editor, about 10 years ago? And I think about Chuck Frederick being editorial page editor now and I shake my head in disbelief at how the DNT has changed since Forum bought. Maybe the talented journalists who have left the DNT could follow the example of those at MinnPost, so we could get some real news again. If one committed citizen who knows how to write, like John Ramos, could do such amazing investigative work on his own, think what a group of committed citizens who know how to write could do.

"If one committed citizen who knows how to write, like John Ramos, could do such amazing investigative work on his own, think what a group of committed citizens who know how to write could do."

There is the laugher of the century.  The guy has written 8 blog posts in the last year--five of which have to do with Spirit Mountain, another which has to do with him taking a break.  Brandon Stahl does five times the work in a week that Ramos does in a year.  It's painfully obvious most of you hear know not what they post about or have ever read Buzz.Duluth.

Well that's dumb, wasn't Sarah on the payroll for UMD? IF she wasn't she should have! All she did was write pro-UMD stories on how they are so thrifty with spending cash and raising capital! My favorite story was when they highlighted that students who take over 13 credits a semester only pay for 13! even if they take over that amount! Glad I took 3 semesters of plus 20-credits!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyone know how I can get my money back?

Banded tuition is a recent innovation at UMD (since, I think, 2007).  It's designed to help students take a higher number of classes a semester, thereby being more likely to graduate in 4 years.

I regret if you attended earlier, Carl, and did not get the discount.  Perhaps we can look at the tuition rate difference and see whether the increase in per credit tuition since you were a student might not eat most of that savings.

...

Coverage of the University was never about being a PR mouthpiece.  The DNT staff does/did 60 hours of good work in a 40 hour workweek, as we all do, and the community should recognize that.

No one enjoys seeing someone receiving a pink slip in this recession. But a question has been asked about education reporting. Ms. Horner wrote a story I found very disrespectful. A group of former school board members held a press conference at a Canal Park Hotel stating their dislike for the Red Plan. She chose to set the tone for her piece by her first sentence, that some may question the timing since the 3 tier referendum was coming up. I listened to her interview one member, very cursory questions. I talked with this gentleman and he told me they had been planning this for months but one thing or another (they are mostly older retired folks)got in the way and they decided to just get as many as possbile together before the snowbirds left. Other examples include omissions. At one school board meeting district employees were falling all over themselves to excuse the fact that the vast majority of bids were let to out of town contractors. That was not reported even though the concrete facts and figures were in packets available to everyone. It was not until this was widely known via blogs, comments (and what happened to those, lots of opinions but also info not provided elsewhere?)that weeks later there was a story on it. There are more examples but this is how opinions are formed that there was a bias in education reporting.