Royal Calkins replaced as Monterey County Herald editor.

Long-time Monterey County Herald Editor Royal Calkins is leaving the paper, which will be run by Santa Cruz Sentinel Editor Don Miller as part of what's being described as a "reorganization plan" of the Digital First Media-owned papers.

Employees were told the news in a mass email sent by Publisher Gary Omernick, a copy of which was forwarded to the Weekly. It was unclear if Calkins was fired or resigned; he didn't immediately respond to an email or voicemail requesting comment. Omernick didn't immediately respond to a voicemail request for comment.

The move leaves the Monterey daily without a locally based chief. Calkins joined the paper in 2000 as city editor and was promoted to editor in 2012 following the departure of Joe Livernois, who had joined the paper in 1982.

In the mass email, Omernick says Miller "has shown he is the kind of leader who can build on the success of the Herald."

"The Herald will continue its strong local news coverage,” Miller says in the statement. “We believe in open access and look forward to working with the community to make them feel a part of the newspaper—all things we’ve done well in Santa Cruz. The Herald, like all good newspapers, is changing, just as our readers are changing the way they consume news and information."

Veteran reporter Virginia Hennessey said in a phone call with the Weekly that employees are not being told if there are any changes in the organization of the two newspapers "other than the consolidation of management."

Hennessey is the Pacific Media Guild's unit secretary of the paper, which is in the middle of ongoing negotiations over pay increases and benefits. Negotiations were in fact ongoing this morning when the announcement was sent at 11:41am.

"Royal is the best editor I've ever worked with and he'll be greatly missed," Hennessey, her voice choking with emotion, said.

A paragraph that Calkins wrote praising his newsroom was left off the statement sent by Omernick. It was forwarded by a Herald employee and reads as follows: "I leave behind an exceptionally talented and hard-working news staff—reporters and others who could have worked at much larger publications but chose to remain here.

"It is my great hope that the community will continue to support their efforts to cover the news as well as possible under challenging conditions," Calkins wrote.

Former editor Livernois calls the news "another sad day in the deconstruction of The Herald and for the readers who deserve better.

"Don Miller is a terrific guy, but he's not Superman. Asking an editor to oversee operations of two different newspapers without middle-management newsroom support is an overwhelming task," Livernois says. "Also, Royal oversaw one of the most dynamic editorial pages for a California daily newspaper its size. It's been a great community resource, and Don will have a massive learning curve if he hopes to keep it going."

The Herald and the Sentinel now share a publisher (Omernick) and an ad director, Dan Krolczyk, a former regional publisher for AOL/Patch.com whose hiring was announced on Feb. 3. Herald Regional Circulation Director Mazi Kavoosi, according to his LinkedIn page, also heads up circulation for the Chico Enterprise-Record.

There have been other massive changes afoot at the Herald as well, but it remains completely unclear if the end-game is to merge the Herald and Sentinel, or to continue to call them separate newspapers even while they share upper management.

On Jan. 25, Calkins wrote a piece titled "Get ready for a new-look Herald," announcing that all production—layout, headline writing—of the paper would be done in Chico along with the 11 other dailies operated by Digital First. As a result, four or five paginator and copyeditor positions will be eliminated at the Herald; those employees have been invited to apply for jobs in Chico.

Meanwhile, a petition signed by 32 members—or 82 percent—of the Pacific Media Workers Guild at the Herald was delivered to Omernick on Feb. 4. The petition asks for a fair pay increase and a reasonable cap on employees' costs for health care. 

"The union has been extremely fired up lately, frustrated by company proposals that would freeze pay for 18 months and eliminate the cap on what employees pay for medical insurance," according to a post on the Mediaworkers.org website by Herald reporter Phil Molnar, who's part of the negotiating team.

"Members' base pay has been frozen for more than three years, during which it was forced to take two week-long unpaid furloughs—a loss of roughly 4 percent of take-home pay," Molnar writes. "In the three years before that, base pay increased by 1 percent annually, but was offset by two week-long unpaid furloughs and an increase in the employee share of medical premiums."