President's Perspective
Laid-Off Sun Staffers Find an Online Voice

(May 12, 2010) For those of us in the Guild accustomed to the grind of daily deadlines, a waiting period of five months from creating text to seeing it in publication seems like an eternity. But it has been well worth the wait for the work of more than 30 former Baltimore Sun workers who have drawn upon their experiences at the paper to contribute to the online "Telling Our Stories: The Days of the Baltimore Sun." (Writers Guild America, East, press release).

In my 20 years of being active in the Washington-Baltimore Guild, I have been privileged to know many of the contributors, even though they work 30 miles away. I get to applaud their accomplishments at the local's annual Front Page Awards (it’s remarkable how often the Sun simply dominated the prizes). Sometimes I have met Guild members at contract-ratification vote meetings. Then there were the times when I was campaigning for union office, and knew the Sun to be an involved unit and a ready source for votes.

When they were unceremoniously cast off from employment a year ago, some of these very members were dismayed and heartbroken. Losing your job is one of the worst slights an adult can endure, maybe second only to losing a spouse or child. For some, the trauma is unimaginable.

I am glad that many of our members at the Sun were able to work through this significant loss in life and career at least in part by identifying it and calling it by name in this project, which was funded through the Writers Guild of America East (which, coincidentally, is represented by the Newspaper Guild of New York).

But it's not my job to tell their stories. The Sun workers have done that job, and admirably. Pay a visit to www.daysofthebaltimoresun.com and see for yourself.