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Newsroom Blues

The Miami Herald launches what Executive Editor Douglas C. Clifton calls a "humane, protective" version of layoffs, a "voluntary separation plan" to streamline management. About 25 editors will have to choose between resigning from the paper or accepting positions lower in the Herald hierarchy or elsewhere in the Knight-Ridder chain. The current salaries of those who choose reassignment will be guaranteed for a year. Five positions, including those of Senior Managing Editor Pete Weitzel and Associate Editor for Broward County Chris Mobley , will be eliminated in the cost-cutting measure, which Clifton attributes to "an incredible cost problem in newsprint." Clifton says regardless of the Herald's efforts to soften the blow, "it's still a shock... The staff is feeling discombobulated."..In other downsizing news, the Wall Street Journal announces that it will lay off 13 reporters, editors and editorial managers... The Chicago Tribune closes its Berlin bureau and moves Howard Witt from the Moscow bureau to the Los Angeles bureau, where he will be chief. Jim Gallagher is the only remaining correspondent in Moscow. The Toronto bureau, which has been unstaffed since Storer Rowley moved to the Jerusalem bureau last August, also remains empty.

Nerds No More

Blaster magazine, a monthly that covers the "digital lifestyle" from a variety of angles, makes its debut. Editorial Director Doug Millison says the new magazine will be "the voice for a generation that has grown up with enabling technologies – and Nintendo and MTV . They are creating art [and] expressing themselves, and the digital revolution is a part of their everyday lives." The cybo-hip mag, its creators warn, combines the look and feel of Japanese comic books, rave graphics, retro art and futuristic layout – picture that, if you dare – in its quest to "bring the feeling of excitement and creativity to the previously unknown and 'nerdy' lifestyle."

Alternative News

Washington City Paper Editor Jack Shafer says he'll be leaving the alternative weekly "to go work for those guys that own the New Times papers," a group of city-based weeklies. Exactly what's the two-fisted scourge of the Washington media going to do? He won't say, beyond commenting that he is "continuing [his] plan of total world domination, of which my nine-and-a-half years at City Paper was only the beginning." Shafer, whose columns of press criticism roughed up the Washington Times , Washington Post and New Republic , among others, adds, Nixon-style, that City Paper won't "have Jack Shafer to kick around anymore.".. Alison True is the new editor of the Chicago Reader . She replaces Michael Lenehan , who will assume the newly created position of executive editor of Chicago Reader, Inc., the paper's parent company.

A Not Very Hidden Camera

CBS reprimands Mike Wallace and "60 Minutes" producer Bob Anderson for videotaping an interview with Karon Haller , a freelance writer, without her knowledge. Apparently Wallace taped Haller, who was working with him on a story about assisted suicide, by hiding a tiny camera in his office drapes. Wallace defended his actions at first, saying he did not believe Haller's privacy had been invaded and that he never intended to air the footage without her permission. Later, after CBS News President Eric Ober said the taping was "a clear-cut violation of CBS News standards..the wrong thing to do and a case of very poor judgment," Wallace called Haller and apologized.

Around Newspapers

Business writer Christopher Byron , who earned himself a reputation with tough pieces on his onetime employer, Time Inc., and jabs at Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman , goes to work for one of his targets. He's a new business columnist for Zuckerman's New York Daily News . Byron remains a monthly columnist for Esquire and Worth ... USA Today reporter James Cox , who has written for the paper's Money section since 1986, opens the paper's first overseas bureau in Hong Kong... Steve Burtt , who worked for retiring Rep. Jamie Whitten (D-Miss.), becomes city editor of the Hattiesburg American in Mississippi... David Barrett , managing editor of the Hartford Courant since 1989, moves up to editor and vice president of the paper, where he first worked as a summer intern in 1970.

On the Infobahn

Dow Jones Business Information Services introduces Dow Jones News/Retrieval, the Newsroom Edition , a business research database that is the only online source for the full text of the Wall Street Journal ... Time magazine creates a technology department that will produce news and feature stories for the magazine about computers, interactive media, online services and other new technologies. Josh Quittner , formerly of Newsday, and Time's Philip Elmer-DeWitt will head the new group. Also at Time, Associate Editor Janice Castro is named editor of Time Daily , the magazine's online news service. She is the first Time journalist to move into full time digital journalism.... At the Orlando Sentinel Maryann Schulze is named project manager of Tribune Interactive Network Services. She will oversee interactive news as well as information and advertising services as they go from the Sentinel to Time Warner Cable 's Full Service Network for interactive television.

Around Magazines

Rob Fleder , formerly an editor at Playboy and Esquire , becomes assistant managing editor of Sports Illustrated . It's his second tour of duty at SI; he left in 1989 for a stint at the late, lamented sports daily, the National . Fleder, who says it was "the combination of up-to-the-minute news coverage and great feature writing [that] attracted me here in the first place," recalls that Sports Illustrated was the first magazine he ever subscribed to... Byte , the global computer publication for technology experts, names Raphael Needleman , former executive editor of PC/Computing magazine, editor in chief... David Shipley , executive editor of the New Republic , announces that he'll be leaving the wonk weekly to write a book about fatherhood. Don't worry: Shipley promises the book won't be about his own impending fatherhood – Shipley and wife Naomi Wolf , author of The Beauty Myth , are expecting. Also departing from the New Republic is associate editor Alexander Star , who becomes editor of Lingua Franca .

A Familiar Ring

Denver Post columnist Ken Hamblin is caught plagiarizing about five paragraphs from a Rocky Mountain News story by City Hall reporter Brian Weber , a blunder that earns him a two-month suspension. Weber's October story was about a city councilwoman accused of racial prejudice by Denver Mayor Wellington Webb . Weber says two days later he was skimming Hamblin's column, in which the mayor is a regular target, when he noticed that the copy looked familiar. "I kept looking for some attribution," says Weber. Hamblin later admitted in an apologetic column to unwitting plagiarism, explaining that he had erred while transcribing from a tape onto which he had dictated Weber's column for background information.

Network News

Former CNN and CBS staffer George Case becomes vice president and director of operations at FoxNews . In his new position Case will oversee Fox's up-and-coming national news division, expanding Fox News Service and developing a nationwide infrastructure for an entire Fox news operation... CNN anchor Frank Sesno assumes the new position of executive editor at the network's Washington bureau. Though Sesno will no longer anchor the daily "International Hour," he will continue to anchor "CNN Late Edition.".. ABC News names Kevin Newman , formerly with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation , coanchor of "World News Now," the network's overnightly newscast hosted by Thalia Assuras .

One for the Books

After 23 years at the New Yorker , Charles McGrath , 47, moves a few blocks west to become editor of the New York Times Book Review . McGrath, who started out at the New Yorker as a night copy editor and eventually worked his way up to deputy editor, says "there's only a handful of jobs in America that could ever tempt me to leave the job I have, and this just happened to be one of them." He succeeds the retiring Rebecca Sinkler .

A New Ethicist

The University of California at Berkeley's graduate school of journalism names psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson a guest lecturer. Masson is best known for his seemingly endless legal battle against New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm over her 1983 profile. Last November Masson lost his most recent libel suit against her. Tom Goldstein , dean of the graduate school, invited Masson to assist him in lecturing for a popular ethics course. In response, the school's chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists submitted an unsigned piece to an electronic student newsletter called @rosebud accusing the school of choosing Masson for his celebrity status rather than his journalism expertise. Goldstein says he is "mystified by the response," adding, "this is much ado about nothing, a mountain out of a molehill and a tempest in a teapot and any other cliché you can associate with it."