Free Republic

Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan sent his public information officer to an Oakland Tribune reporter’s house in the middle of the night on Friday to push for changes in a story that Meehan thought was inaccurate. Chief Meehan then twice called the reporter, Doug Oakley, and sent him numerous follow up emails urging him to alter wording in the story about a community meeting called to examine Berkeley police response to the Feb. 18. murder of Peter Cukor. The 12:45 am visit by Sgt. Mary Kusmiss on March 9 and subsequent police demands have left Oakley disturbed and shaken. “I...

The Bay Area News Group announced Thursday that its newspapers will now operate under a single, common news management team under the direction of David J. Butler, editor of the San Jose Mercury News and vice president for news for its parent, MediaNews Group. The announcement was made by Mac Tully, publisher of the newspapers and group vice president for BANG. In addition to the Mercury News, the newspapers include the Contra Costa Times, the San Mateo County Times, the Oakland Tribune and various sister daily and weekly papers.

As expected, the union at the Oakland Tribune and its sister papers has been busted as a result of today’s merger between those former papers of the Alameda Newspaper Group and the non-union Contra Costa Times, its sister papers, and the former Hills newspapers. Operations for those papers have been consolidated under a new banner, Bay Area News Group-East Bay, or BANG-EB, for short. In an e-mail this morning to all ANG and CC Times employees, publisher of BANG-EB John Armstrong noted that members of the Guild bargaining unit at the former ANG newspapers now constitutes “significantly less than 50...