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Re: Laid off, now what?

At 01:18 PM 9/1/2003 -0400, you wrote:
That hits close to home for those of us in Southern California who went through the same process with the San Diego U-T, and I went through it with my local paper, the Riverside Press-Enterprise. Our separation here in SoCal was based on those papers archiving and reselling our work without our permission and with no recompense for it, and asking us then to sign all rights contracts or leave.

In my case the garden editor called me several times afterward about various questions and while I was polite, I declined to help her. And to add insult to injury, for some weeks after I was canned, the paper still ran a tag line advertising my column, exhorting readers to read all about growing flowers, in my column, Flower Power. I asked them to remove that since they were no longer buying the column and they apologized.
They are doing that with me, too. My columns are still online, and on the front page of the features section, left hand column, they urge readers to go online and see my back columns. I have a call in to the office manager. Frankly, I've been writing this column for 9 years and 10 months, and I don't recall ever signing anything giving first NA rights, much less electronic rights. I'm going to be nice about it because looking at the features section, I think the young ladies in charge are short termers. I'd like to go back, but I have other things to do too.


My brother lives in Boise and I always made a point of reading your column when I was up there.

But there's life after getting the boot. Believe me--there are propbably better things out there than The Statesman.


Gerald Burke
Freelance Writer
Gardening and Travel
We lived in Riverside from 66 to '71, then moved here. I thought the Press-Enterprise was a very good newspaper, but they've obviously lost their marble. I just finished reading "Into the Buzzsaw" with a piece by David E. Hendrix about his covering the TWA flight 800 crash. If the other city papers were doing what they ought, they wouldn't leave it up to a smallish newspaper on the other coast to cover it. I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, home of 125 mph winds from time to time, and got a degree in Journalism from the U. of Colorado. I think the winds accounted for the fact that there were no plant nurseries there. Riverside was the first place I had lived where I could go roam among plants, studying tags, etc., and trying to educate myself about plants. When we moved here we bought the largest lot we could afford so I could have a large garden.

I've subscribed to Gardens online for years, and one of the most knowledgeable people who participated was Glenn Park of Riverside. Then he was arrested for kidnapping a child, and apparently sent to prison. A very sad situation. Apparently he had owned a nursery in Riverside, but I'm not sure where it was located.

I do know there are other things to do. For one thing, did you know that E. Annie Proulx, author of "The Shipping News" (for which she won the Pulitzer Prize) and "Accordion Crimes" among other esteemed works of fiction, was originally a garden writer? She wrote numerous articles for Horticulture magazine, plus some garden books. I have her books, "The Fine Art of Salad Gardening" and "The Gourmet Gardener." I don't have pretensions to jump into fiction writing, but before I was offered the job of writing the garden column, my husband and I had accumulated copious notes on the life and career of a 19th century theatrical manager who brought good theatre to the moving frontier. He's now retired from teaching theatre arts at Boise State University (UC Riverside when we were there), and we ought to get back to that project.

Thank you for your note. Margaret Lauterbach





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