Donna Coven was the payroll supervisor

Donna, who started at The Post in 1977, was the person who saw to it that every employee got a love letter from the publisher on Thursday. As far as I know, we never missed a payday when Donna was driving the payroll bus.

Her life was a living math word problem

As a manager, I hated dealing with time cards, particularly during weeks with holidays in them. In the early days, I’d try to figure out how to calculate how someone who worked 12 hours on a holiday should be paid. OK, they get 8 hours of regular pay; 8 hours of time-and-a-half holiday pay; they only get regular overtime for the extra 4 hours, but that’s if the relative humidity is 83% and the winds are from the north and the two trains meet in St. Louis.

That’s when I would go see Donna, who would calmly and patiently point out that the trains were really going to meet in Cleveland.

An auditor questioned her access level

John Occhipinti, the former Data Processing manager, who was celebrating his one-year anniversary of retirement from The Post, said that Donna “was meticulous about her numbers and worked tirelessly to confirm their accuracy.”

She was given a level of access to the company’s mainframe computer that was normally reserved for programmers. “A security auditor gave me a black eye one year for allowing a non-programmer to have that access,” John said. “In my written response, I said that it was more important that PBNI employees get paid correctly every week than to try to limit Donna’s functionality.”

Donna’s retirement party was December 30

The official company policy these days is not to have retirement parties, but the folks in Accounting are such rebels that they held an unofficial one for Donna.

It gave an opportunity for some of us who had left in 2008 and earlier to see old friends. Former Accounting Boss Larry Siedlik, the former VP and Treasurer, was on hand sporting a new wedding ring.

Donna’s husband, former Tech Services Assistant Manager, Ray Coven,  was part of the first wave of buyouts in the summer of 2008.

A new payroll system is in place and employees are paid every two weeks instead of every Thursday. I haven’t checked with any of my former coworkers to see if the trains are still meeting in Cleveland like they’re supposed to.

Gallery of photos

Here is a gallery of photos taken at Donna’s retirement party. Click on any picture to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the images.

Unfortunate ad placement is a fact of life. I’m sure the page designer would like to claw back this one showing a person with a computer strapped to his back, falling though the air like a parachute jumper. The ad happened to run on Sept. 17, 2001, next to a story about how IT departments were coping with the aftermath of September 11, when real people jumped out of the Twin Towers to keep from burning to death.

How well did my old paper do on the earthquake in Haiti?

I spent 35 years working for The Palm Beach Post. I never went to Haiti myself, but I sent photographers there when I was director of photography. I’m not exaggerating when I say that every shooter came back a changed person.

Lannis Waters, a photographer who had been to Haiti several times was one of the few old-timers to survive the buyouts. I heard a rumor that he was going back, so I turned to The Palm Beach Post web site to see if he had filed anything in the gallery of photos from the devastated island.

This goes beyond insenstive

Cops, journalists, healthcare workers and EMTs use gallows humor to protect us from what we see on a daily basis. We try hard, though, to keep that defense mechanism away from outsiders, who wouldn’t understand.

These advertisements paired with horrific pictures of crushed bodies, maimed children, destroyed homes and incredible human suffering were worse than any caption I ever saw posted on the photo department’s back bulletin board.

SECOND WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES AHEAD

I couldn’t decide which was worse

The Jet Blue ad that says, “THIS DAY JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER” next to a father who has just discovered his 10-month-old daughter in a pile of corpses.

A Palm Beach Post house ad with the headline “SURVIVING THE SQUEEZE” next to a photo of a pair of feet sticking out from under a collapsed hotel.

Another Palm Beach Post house ad headlined, “LOSING YOUR HOME?” next to a photo of the rubble of Haiti’s Presidential Palace.

Airlines used to kill ads

Commercial airlines used to have a mandatory kill in their contracts to keep one of their ads from running on the same day as a plane crash. I’m sure that some of these advertisers would be appalled to see their ads used next to these photos. Under any other circumstances, the juxtapositions would be funny. This isn’t one of them.

My geek son gave this explanation:

A web developement person agreed

Possible solutions?

• Kill the ad feed for a few days?
• Pull the ads out of rotation (some photos must lack ads because they displayed plain black where the ad would have been)
• Run APPROPRIATE house ads detailing how you are covering the event
• Run public service announcements

Technology has come a long way

I’m waiting for a Post response

Gallery of Photos

[Note: Ken Steinhoff's first published picture was April 18, 1963. He's worked for papers in four states as a reporter, copy editor, photographer, typesetter and engraver.  He was hired as a photographer for The Palm Beach Post and Evening Times Dec. 31, 1972. He was a shooter for three years, promoted to director of photography and spent from 1991 to his retirement in 2008 as telecommunications manager. He wrote this piece as a long-time Palm Beach Post subscriber who remembers when newspapers were accountable for every word they published.]

Even though I had taken an early retirement buyout, I wanted to spend some time with the men and women who had made my pictures look good for so many years. I’ve always believed that every worker should be able to give his or her kids and grandkids a picture of what they do for a living.

I shot these pictures over two of the last weekends before the presses were stilled forever.

Go here to see the Magic of the Big Iron and the workers who drove it so well.

Photos by Ken Steinhoff, former staff photographer, director of photography, editorial operations manager and telecommunications manager at The Post from 12/31/72 – 9/1/08

Rab interviews several journalists who took the “voluntary” buyouts.

You can read it through this link.

 Those in the business – and now out of it – will recognize most of the names, and recall most of the facts in the fairly detailed article.

“The Home Page of Paradise” – as seen below, on Oct. 21, its last day in print.

Well, Taylor is gone and they’re now still without a publisher — and, without Paradise. Here’s the mast from Oct. 22:

Link to the story in The Palm Beach Post here.

Cox Media reorganizes its top tier

Meanwhile, the parent group, Cox Media Group, reorganizes. Here’s the circles chart. (NP = newspaper. RD = radio)

In all, about 300 employees left The Post before the end of August 2008. Close to that same number would leave at the end of the year, leaving the newspaper’s staffing about half of what it once was. Another layoff, expected by Sept. 15, was recently announced.

When I was shooting record pictures of the Hurricane Frances damage that peeled the roof off the PSL bureau in 2004, I never dreamed how prescient this picture would become.

T-Coasters held own reunion

The T-Coasters tried as much as possible to stay north of the Palm Beach County line, so, with the exception of former bureau chief Glenn Henderson, none of them showed up at the West Palm Beach staff reunion Wednesday night.

Glenn came south because (A) he was used to interacting with the West Palm Beach office as part of his former job and (B) there was a rumor that Eliot Kleinberg was buying. The latter turned out to be false.

We heard Glenn was buying

Jan Norris and I thought we’d go north to crash the T-Coast party. (A) It would be fun to touch base with folks we’d worked with and (B) there was a rumor that Glenn was buying. The latter turned out to be false.

Our arrangement was that I’d take pictures and she’d do the writing. She was also responsible for getting the names of all the staffers who hadn’t won their 30-year watches.

(Actually, the company gave us a Rolex or equivalent when we were inducted into the 20 Year Club. Click the 20 Year Club picture to enlarge it. Sally Swartz is Class of ‘79 on the lower right.)

Never trust a photographer with an admin login

As promised, here’s the gallery. Jan tapped Glenn Henderson to fill in names of a few she didn’t know; captions follow the images.

Click on an image to enlarge it

Captions:

1st row, left to right:

1 – No News Tomorrow! memo

2 – 20-Year Club from Palm Beach Newspapers Inc.

3 – Treasure Coast staffers gather for 1-year layoff reunion at Jensen Beach Ale House

2nd row:

1- Eve Samples, former business writer and now Scripps Martin County columnist.

2- Scott Samples (Eve’s husband), and their boy, Heath

3- Sarah Prohaska, former St. Lucie courts reporter

3rd row:

4– Cara Fitzpatrick, current T-coast reporter for The Post

5- Glenn Henderson, T-coast bureau chief

6- Jill Taylor, former Martin cops reporter

4th row:

7 – Jim Reeder, former St. Lucie government reporter

8 – Teresa Lane, former Port St. Lucie bureau chief and PSL city reporter, and her husband, David, former T-coast photo chief

9 – Pat Moore, former Martin courts reporter

5th row:

10 – Paul Milette, former T-coast photo chief

11 & 12 – Sally Swartz, T-coast Opinion columnist (still freelancing for The Post)

Not shown: Daphne Duret, current T-coast reporter for The Post

Institutional memory shot

As it was in the main office, you’re looking at hundreds – we repeat: hundreds — of years combined of institutional memory of the area – gone from the local media. That long-term knowledge of a region and its news and newsmakers is one of the biggest victims of media layoffs across the country. 

[Editor's note: the "I" is Ken Steinhoff, former Palm Beach Post and Evening Times staff photographer, director of photography, editorial operations manager, telecommunications manager and a member of the Class of '72 in the 20 Year Club. He's usually busy keeping his own blog updated.]

Post 300 Reunion to Become Annual Event

While only a few could make this reunion, it’s planned as an annual event somewhere in the area.

The story, Post 300 Holds First Reunion, is complete with photos and video.

Missed the reunion? Please comment below as to where you are today and what life is like post-Post.

Franklin

Doug Franklin, briefly publisher at The Palm Beach Post and now executive vice-president of Cox Newspapers, spoke at the recent meeting of the Florida Press Association/Florida Society of News Editors members in Palm Beach.

Talking to the assembled group of publishers and editors at The Breakers, Franklin addressed the tough challenges facing the industry. He reportedly gave a roster of ideas to do away with the current ”non-working” business model of newspapering, and embrace cost-cutting measures to streamline operations and get profitability back on track while meeting readers’ needs.

He advocated cutting and combining staffs of all local papers to create one large regional paper for the Southeast area.

Some key points included:

• Identify “core” coverage areas, and use salaried beat reporters to cover them.
• Use freelancers to fill in all other coverage, reducing full-time staff to essential personnel.
• Eliminate local copy desks – combine desks among all the papers in one region.
• Combine the papers in a region and pool all other resources.

He also didn’t rule out going solely to a digital edition but said the media must shed traditional formats to deliver news and information on several platforms in this technology-driven age.

Already in motion

Franklin put into pratice his methods at The Post beginning in August 2008, when more than 280 employees were offered “Voluntary Separation Agreements.” This was followed by further staff cuts in December, and the shutting down of presses and print production on site. Those operations were moved to the Sun-Sentinel, along with distribution.

Coverage of certain news beats is pooled with them; sports and photography departments also pool resources.

Palm Beach Newspapers Inc., which publishes the Palm Beach Daily News and La Palma along with The Post,  is down to around 540 full-time employees,  from a high of around 1700.  More staff cuts, estimated at 40 to 50 from advertising and news departments, were recently announced the current publisher, Alex Taylor.

After a round of hurried employee evaluations — points awarded to each staffer based on criteria decided by managers and HR — the cuts will be made by September 1. Remaining positions will undergo a reorganization. Those remaining must reapply for their jobs.

Alex Taylor, The Palm Beach Post Publisher, announced today that 11 full-time employees were losing their jobs. That means there are 32 employees left at the paper. Says Mr. Taylor:

To put this into a little perspective it’s important to point out that last year’s layoffs did not touch the Shiny Sheet because business on the island appeared relatively unaffected during the 2008 downturn. However, things changed on the island after the turn of the year. Business dropped sharply in what many think is the sharpest retail downturn the island has ever seen in modern times. Real Estate, Madoff, plummeting tourism, a Worth Ave. jewelry heist, a general reluctance to spend on luxury goods and numerous other factors have created a storm on the island that has shut down much of its economic activity.

With All That Going On, You’d Think They’d Need Journalists

It has been a great news year for Palm Beach. A $50-billion pyramid scheme in our own back yard, and an old-school jewelry heist are a couple of my favorites.

Thanks to the economic downturn and Bernie Madoff, there have been some amazing turns of fortune on the island to the tune of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. After years of boring society balls and minor social standing drama, something interesting is happening on the island and it is a shame there aren’t going to be as many people left to records the stories.