Saying they want a seat at the table, Almanac journalists join effort to form a new, company-wide union

Unfortunate. I enjoy reading the Almanac and would be sad to see it close its doors.

This is good news. As a former reporter at the Almanac, I loved the job and enjoyed being poor for a change (having left a high paying and utterly soulless job in high tech). And that's on top of leaving far behind a role in the devil-may-care ongoing destruction of journalism's business model, not to mention the social fabric as a whole, by Silicon Valley industry.

The charm of poverty wore off when our newsroom suffered from reporters departing and not being replaced. The workload became, and remains to this day, inhuman.

Granted, revenue for journalism enterprises is scarce. It's hard times, for sure. (We're ever so thankful, high tech.) Newsroom staff (print journalists, photojournalists, editors and page designers) deserve actual in-person representation at the table.

I want to add that while I called the reporting situation at the Almanac "inhuman," that is not an indictment of management. And forming a union will not magically solve the problems of financing local journalism.

If anything, management at Embarcadero Publishing was forward thinking, transparent, responsible and generous.

The dire conditions faced by local journalism have little if anything to do with the quality of management. Management, at Embarcadero certainly, loves journalism and it's mission every bit as much as the staff does.

Having staff represented at the table should shed light on what may be an intractable situation, but at least staff would get to see the difficulties for what they are, something journalists are more than capable of doing.