What do you say when something like this happens?

My wife texted me shortly after 2pm today, telling me there had been a shooting at Westroads. My immediate thought was that it was some dispute gone bad. It wasn’t until going online that I started getting a hint of how big it was.

Omaha.com, the World-Herald’s website, once again failed the test of being able to handle visitors when people actually need information, but fortunately Omaha’s television stations were able to come through with regular updates. On KETV.com, I watched as each refresh on the web browser seemed to yield more details and more victims. First it was two injured, then four, then five injured, then one dead, then perhaps three, and then all of a sudden it was nine.

It took me so long for it to actually click ‚Äî that this was entirely random and in the middle of a store we probably visit an average of once a week ‚Äî that it didn’t even occur to me to check on my family here in town until after a friend in Little Rock checked on me!

We ended up one of the lucky families, with everyone accounted for on my wife’s side and mine. I can’t imagine what it must be like for the families who still haven’t heard from someone; for the people who recognize one of the handful of cars still parked in that barren Westroads parking lot.

Don Bauder first reported it last Friday, when only 15 to 20 positions were going to be cut, but now it’s official: the San Diego Union-Tribune has announced a massive buyout plan, with 43 newsroom positions and more throughout the company targeted.

As Bauder reports,

The plan is called “voluntary separation program,” or VSP, but in the memo, U-T president Gene Bell warns, “Please note that the level of employee participation in the voluntary program will determine the extent of future involuntary separations.” In other words, it’s better to have your hand chopped off now lest your head gets lopped later.

VoiceofSanDiego.com’s Rob Davis gave a breakdown of the cuts as “nine metro reporters (from a pool that one newsroom source estimated at 75), three columnists, three critics, two photographers and 12 editors or supervisors.” Davis added that 40 non-newsroom positions will be eliminated.

This particular section of his story caught my eye:

Some employees are not eligible for the buyouts, an indication of the newspaper’s core strategy for future news coverage. Its environment and politics reporters, breaking news team, computer-assisted reporting specialists, sports columnists, copy editors and editorial cartoonist cannot take the buyout. Nor can employees of its Internet site, SignOnSanDiego.com.

“You can see what they’re saying they still value,” [Dean] Nelson [director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University] said. “And they’re obviously saying we can no longer be covering all things about this town. The fact that SignOn is protected I think says a lot. Because that’s where the future is.”

I would say it’s pretty rare that a newspaper that’s cutting more than 80 positions due to cost-saving concerns has built-in protections that suggest a high priority on editorial cartooning.

I’ve had a lot of negative stuff to say about the San Diego Union-Tribune, but one regular on my list of must-reads is their columnist Gerry Braun.

Braun wrote a column this week about the much-criticized evacuation memo that City Attorney Mike Aguirre sent to Mayor Jerry Sanders. I wrote about that last month, highlighting the efforts of U-T columnist Chris Reed and U-T cartoonist Steve Breen (not to mention the efforts of Voice of San Diego editor Scott Lewis) to use the opportunity to mock Aguirre for being guano crazy while ignoring any legitimate discussion about the need for evacuation plans.

Braun managed to do what Reed and the U-T failed to attempt — actually sit down with Aguirre and try to figure out what he meant on something so substantial as recommending a city-wide evacuation plan.

So Monday I met Aguirre at a Hillcrest coffee shop and asked him what he was thinking when he volunteered the advice that now threatens his re-election.

‚ÄúI did not want to evacuate the city,‚Äù Aguirre said, ‚Äúbut the city has to have an evacuation plan, which it didn’t, under the federal grants we get from Homeland Security.‚Äù

Reed just pointed fingers and laughed. Lewis did interview Aguirre, demonstrating that it’s easier to mock someone after you can get them on the defensive and then cherry-pick comments from them.

Braun appears to be far from an Aguirre apologist; rather, he seems to be a columnist who takes no personal joy or credit when one politician succeeds and another stumbles. Where some commentators seem willing to stake a sloppy professional reputation on the ups and downs of their friends and nemeses, Braun’s approach seems simultaneously laid-back and detached yet intimate and involved.

It doesn’t hurt, obviously, that this piece makes Aguirre look like a sane human. I think I’ve made it very clear on this blog and in my cartoons that I think the guy gets a bad rap (at times); people have begun arguing against their straw-man parody of the man, which he has admittedly contributed greatly to, rather than discussing his ideas.

But check out Braun’s column. It’s a rare look at Mike Aguirre, the human being, particularly in the pages of the Union-Tribune.