Late last month, Gargi Chakrabarty, a business reporter who'd shifted to the Denver Post after the Rocky Mountain News shut down, announced that she was leaving the paper in order to move with her husband to the Boston area. However, Post editor Greg Moore said no replacement would be hired; instead, remaining staffers would pick up the slack.
Less than two weeks later, a close variation on this scenario has cropped up. Another business reporter, Elizabeth Aguilera, is giving up her position in order to accept a fellowship at the University of Southern California; she offers details below. As a result, reporter Mark Jaffe is being reassigned from the metro section to business, where he'll concentrate on energy coverage -- Chakrabarty's specialty. But no one new will be brought aboard, despite the loss of two journalists over the span of two weeks. "I can do what needs to be done with the staff I have," Moore notes via e-mail. "Lots of other papers are doing the same."
No argument there. During times like these, every newspaper employee is being asked to do more -- and that workload grows with each departure. In the meantime, we can only wonder how many stories that might have been caught this time last year, when both the Post and the Rocky Mountain News were on the case, are now falling through the cracks.
To read more about Aguilera's opportunity, click "Continue."
E-mail from Elizabeth Aguilera, June 11:
Yes, it's true. I'm heading out at the end of July for an Annenberg Fellowship at the University of Southern California in Specialized Journalism. The program will allow me to create my own course of study across the graduate schools and to learn multi-media tools and emerging technologies. As a Fellow, I'll be part of a cohort from the communications, engineering and cinema graduate schools.I'm excited and nervous to be stepping away from newspapers for the first time in 12 years (7 of those in Denver), but I think it's going to be worth it. It's an exceptional opportunity for me. My dog Houdini is going with me.
