September 1, 2003

Those with integrity 
need not apply

Representatives of the Pioneer Press negotiating team canceled a session set for Aug. 29 following informational picketing outside the suburban home of Pioneer Press publisher Larry Green and just before the sudden resignation of long-time newspaper columnist Virginia Gerst. It was not known at this time whether the session was canceled in response to the picketing and a new date for further negotiations of Sept.11 was set.

Any ill will over the picketing of Green's home, however, was lost in the explosion over Gerst's resignation. Pioneer Press, one of the premier community weekly newspapers in the United States, is still the so-called "cash cow'' of the Hollinger newspaper network in the Chicago-area. Hollinger sent in Green, a former news reporter and Sun-Times administrator, ''to gut the operation while maintaining the façade of a committed community newspaper,'' said Chicago Newspaper Guild president Mike Ulreich.

"Virginia Gerst would have been the last person I would have expected to reveal the dubious integrity at the heart of the Hollinger operation but as we've seen at other newspapers, many times the newspaper's managers can't accept what they are forced to do by their Hollinger masters,'' Ulreich said.

Gerst resigned after a the manager of the newspaper's marketing department wrote a second review of a restaurant that Gerst had previously reviewed and given an unfavorable rating. She had worked at the newspaper for 27 years. In a memo to her employer Gerst referred to the cost-cutting that had ravaged the 54-newspaper suburban Pioneer Press. Gerst said that she had been required to edit the central news bureau papers, increasing her work-load by one-third. "I understand that these are tough times for newspapers,'' Gerst wrote in her resignation memo. "But economic concerns are not sufficient to make me sacrifice the integrity of a section I have worked for, cared about and worried over for two decades.

My departure date depends on when the 'review' will run, as I do not want my name associated with the section when it appears.'' "What a long strange trip this week has been,'' said Pioneer Press unit chairman Lynne Stiefel in a memo to her members. "By this afternoon it appeared that journalistic integrity would live to fight another day at Pioneer Press. But look what it took: an editor's resignation, protests from the Guild and the scrutiny of Chicago and national media.''

In its posting for Gerst's suddenly available position, Stiefel said "it's clear how the publisher views all this fuss. The skills that management wants in the next editor is the "ability to see beyond own preferences to provide readers with a full spectrum of arts and entertainment coverage.' '' "Talk about small and mean,'' Stiefel said. "They still don't get it.''

Meanwhile about 20 Pioneer Press employees and their families picketed outside Green's home in Glencoe. Contract talks have stalled between Green's negotiating team and Guild members representing the 150-member unit at Pioneer Press. A handbill distributed by the protesters informed local residents that Pioneer Press publishes 50 newspapers in 70 Chicago suburbs, including Green's current home of Glencoe. "Like the Sun-Times, Pioneer Press is owned by Hollinger International Inc., a publicly-traded company, whose chairman and CEO, Conrad Black, is facing shareholder unrest and allegations of insider dealings.''

In a response to a Guild campaign asking readers to send in postcards protesting Pioneer's treatment of its editorial staff, Green wrote a letter to Glencoe residents telling them what wonderful community coverage they were receiving and about the award-winning reporters and photographers on staff.

In response, the Guild handbill noted that Pioneer had been trying to negotiate a contract with Green's representatives, since April of 2002. "The unit believes that the publisher's current proposals-which eliminate salary schedules and transfer rights, make all news reporters interchangeable with photographers and gut health benefits-will further erode our ability to adequately cover our communities.''

The Pioneer staff has been cut by 24 percent in the last five years. "At current levels that has left .61 of a reporter, .16 of a photographer, .13 of a reporter and two-tenths of a editorial assistant per community.'' "Does less than 2/3 of a reporter to cover a community sound like great news coverage to you?"

"The situation at Pioneer Press is even sadder when you realize that Green is a former news reporter and Guild member,'' Ulreich said. "Now he's crossed over to the other side and he's trying to make the paper, which I considered to be one of the finest weeklies in America, to the status of a weekly shopper.''