Editorial: The News – what about the writers?

Deborah Bonello, head of MexicoReporter.com

I wanted to add more details to the dispatch I filed today for the Los Angeles Times and MexicoReporter.com on the changes at the News. There were some details that didn’t seem worth including for the LATimes readers, but I wanted to share them with you here.

Over the course of writing the piece, I spoke to some of the contributors to the newspaper, both past and still present.

Malcolm Beith, the former national editor and now overall editor of the News (he was one of the journalists laid off and then promptly rehired) was good enough to get in touch at my request.

He is now overseeing a bespoke editorial staff of two, one of them part-time, but says that they’ll be using material from other reporters at Grupo Mac to fill in the gaps.

“I totally understand mergers in this day and age, as well as cost cutting,” he said.

“My only grumble was the way it was handled – if it had been handled this way by a big multi-national then I would understand, but it was handled poorly by a family business.”

Beith’s feelings, and perhaps those of his former co-workers, are clear in the editorial that appeared in the newspaper today. When I asked Victor Hugo O’Farill today during a phone interview why he hadn’t gone down there himself on Friday to break the news to the News, he said that his legal team had advised him not to.

The official contract arrangement between employees and employer at the News was left sufficiently informal to allow the owner O’Farill to remove himself from the position of employer whenever he saw fit. The initial, temporary three-month contracts that all employees started on were never replaced by the full-time permanent contracts required after the end of that three-month period.

But they were promised, which is why there seems to be a legal grey area in terms of whether the News is required, by law, to pay employees that it laid off three-months pay. To my knowledge, they’ve been offered only one month’s pay and as far as O’Farill was concerned when I spoke to him this afternoon, they’re within the law.

The former managing editor Jonathan Clark was also kind enough to speak to me. He was one of the 26 members of staff laid off on Friday who wasn’t rehired.

“Who wins in Mexico?” said Clark.

“If you look at Mexican history, rich people manipulate the system anyway they want to.”

The News has used the strapline “Mexico explained” since it relaunched back in 2007.

“What happened on Friday is Mexico explained,” said Clark.

“Wealthy Mexicans screwed over hard-working, middle-class Mexicans.”

And what about the numerous freelancers who contribute on a regular basis to the newspaper and are still owed money? I was contacted by my friend and colleague Michel Marizco, who runs BorderReporter.com and also wrote regular columns for the News from northern Mexico, largely around the issues of the drug trade and drug-related violence.

He said: “O’Farill bailed out of the newspaper business owing me and others, even managers, thousands of dollars in back pay. As a columnist, I was asked to only bill the company a few times a year to eliminate accounting hassles. I agreed because I figured we were all above stealing a few paltry thousands from each other, nickel and dime stuff. But I was wrong. O’Farill walked away with my money and I want it back.”