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Launched in 2009, the Harvard Writers at Work lecture series focuses on the ways that writing, by those at Harvard, connects academic and professional work and the broader public. The events are primarily aimed at Harvard undergraduates, with a special interest in drawing freshmen in order to inspire them at the outset of their education to see, no matter what their concentration, that writing matters and that they can create a writing life while in college and in their future careers. The series is co-sponsored by the Harvard College Writing Program, the Harvard Extension School Master’s Degree Program in Journalism,  Harvard Review , the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, the Harvard College Program in General Education, and Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.

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Berkeley Writers at Work

About berkeley writers at work.

The Berkeley Writers at Work series was begun in 1997 as a forum for campus writers of note to discuss their writing process.

Research and teaching are the two primary goals of a large research university like Berkeley. Research is highlighted in many ways on this campus; to a lesser degree, so is teaching. However, writing itself—the primary way that faculty convey the results of their research—is rarely discussed.

The most common kind of writing forum involves writers of fiction and poetry reading selections and talking about the content of their work. Berkeley Writers at Work differs from these in that we focus (although not exclusively) on writers of nonfiction, and then on the process, rather than the content, to the extent that these can be separated.

Most of the campus community (faculty, staff, and students) spend most of their time writing pieces other than poetry and fiction, and we believe that it is invaluable to make public the  discussion  of the kind of writing that most people at Berkeley are involved in, one way or another. How does a Pulitzer Prize winner in nonfiction get an idea? How does she start writing about it? How does he organize his work? Does she write in solitude? How does he revise? Edit? Who else reads the work in progress? These are all issues that many writers face, whether they are doing reports for the campus or books for publication.

Beyond developing a sense of community among the people who write on campus, we see this series as also simply highlighting writing on this campus. We have a number of truly gifted, award-winning writers whose work is more hailed elsewhere than here. This series provides a wonderful forum for writers on this campus.

Berkeley Writers at Work is aimed at the general campus community: faculty, staff, and students. College Writing instructors frequently ask their students to attend and assign them reading and writing assignments based on the interviews. Video and audio tapes and transcripts of the interviews are available, as well as selected works by the featured writers.

For more information, contact John Levine by email at  [email protected]

Berkeley Writers at Work: Jabari Mahiri

Recent events, october 12, 2023.

12:00 pm to 1:30 pm at Morrison Library

Jabari Mahiri, Professor in the Berkeley School of Education (BSE) and the William and Mary Jane Brinton Family Chair in Urban Education,

will be the featured writer in the Fall 2023 Berkeley Writers at Work series on Thursday, October 12, from noon to 1:30 pm in the Morrison Library, 101 Main Library, on the UC Berkeley campus

Want to talk about writing? This long-running Seattle group has you covered

This piece is from our latest This City Block series, which highlights stories from Ballard.

At 34 years and counting, the It’s About Time Writers’ Reading Series makes a convincing claim to the title of Seattle’s longest-running reading series, where writers share their work with other writers. Series facilitator Peggy Sturdivant says the inclusivity of the reading series is the secret of its success.

“You don’t have to be published,” Sturdivant says. “You could just be anyone hanging out in the library, and you can do the open mic and share your work.”

It’s About Time offers three-minute slots to any writer, no matter their level of experience, and every month an established author offers a 20-minute craft lecture. 

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Inspired in part by the University of Washington’s legendary Castalia poetry series, It’s About Time was founded in 1990 by local author Esther Altshul Helfgott as an extension of her writing classes. In the first meetings at the Ravenna-Bryant Senior Center “we had a great turnout,” Helfgott recalls. “It was a great community, so I just continued with it.”

For the first half of the series’ existence, It’s About Time restlessly bounced around bookstores and libraries in Seattle’s North End, including Third Place Books Ravenna and SPL’s University Branch.

As the series opened up to the public, Helfgott made sure It’s About Time was as warm and welcoming as possible. “It’s scary to get up there in front of a group when you’ve never read, especially for someone who’s never thought of herself or himself as a writer,” she says. It was important to her that “somebody who’s 100 years old can come and read, and so can somebody who’s 10 or 12.”

Helfgott’s message, that “anybody can write,” helped the series expand in popularity even as it searched for a permanent home, and in 2007, it found one: the Ballard branch of the Seattle Public Library.

“Ballard was a good home for us,” Helfgott says. “A lot of people from Ballard, it turned out, were writers.”

In 2011, Helfgott was preparing to retire and trying to find a good steward to lead the series forward. Sturdivant was one of those Ballard-based writers, a poet who wrote about neighborhood events for the Ballard News Tribune and was heavily invested in the community. 

“I looked for somebody I thought was stable enough in the community who had roots here and was not going to flee,” she says. “And when I met Peggy, I knew that she would have her own way of doing the series, but she would keep it going in terms of longevity.” 

Helfgott, it turns out, chose wisely. Sturdivant’s pride in the series practically resonates on a cellular level. She keeps lists of readers and recalls milestones including “when [current Seattle Civic Poet] Shin Yu Pai first read and had her baby that night” and when Seattle writer Allison Green read from her book about Northwest novelist and poet Richard Brautigan “the night her dad died.” 

Sturdivant has seen some of the most beloved names in Washington state literature read — poets including Susan Rich, Ebo Barton, Bill Carty, and former state Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken, as well as novelists including Erica Bauermeister, E. Lily Yu and Kathleen Alcalá. The writing group’s stage also serves as a living link between contemporary writers and prominent Seattle authors and It’s About Time all-stars who have since died, including Crysta Casey and Kim-An Lieberman. 

But while some of Seattle’s best-known writers have read at It’s About Time, it’s those first-time writers who keep the series as vibrant as it was when Helfgott was first starting out — old and young, housed and unhoused, trained and untrained. As long as you are supportive of other writers, It’s About Time saves a space onstage for you, and provides a room full of writers eager to listen to what you have to say. 

Former Seattle writer Donna Miscolta, who recently moved to Spain, says she misses Seattle’s writing community, and she calls It’s About Time “one of the friendliest and most fun series” Seattle has to offer. “I remember being able to try out early work that would eventually become part of my third book, ‘Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories.’ Whether the audience was small or large, it was always attentive and supportive.”

During the pandemic, the series moved online, which helped it become a hub for immunocompromised writers. Jesse Minkert, who was previously a board member of the long-running Red Sky Poetry Theater, says the online readings “were essentially my only contact with the literary community” during the pandemic.

“I depend on this outlet to keep connected. The city is full of great writers, and some are like me, dealing with age, medical conditions and disabilities,” Minkert wrote in an email. “Poetry online is, to my mind, essential to people like us.” 

The online component has also allowed the series to be archived, in the form of a YouTube channel . “Sometimes there’s just nights that are magic when synergy happens between the readers,” Sturdivant says. She recalls one evening when a Vietnam War-era memoir piece early in the program inspired later readers to solemnly recall their draft numbers from memory before sharing their work, in a spontaneous and moving reminder of how the war forever marked a generation. Before the pandemic, moments like that were ephemeral, but “having it be recorded and then on YouTube for the last couple of years has kind of been a dream come true.”

But like any community-minded creative endeavor, It’s About Time has faced plenty of challenges, and that includes whether or not it can return to the library now that it is experimenting with a hybrid in-person and online model. Additionally, Sturdivant says that as SPL faces a citywide hiring freeze , library staff have expressed some uncertainty about whether Ballard’s library, which has been It’s About Time’s home for 17 years, will continue to host the series in the future.

Sturdivant says management at SPL’s Ballard branch has been calling for the series to return to physical meetings but that staff at the Ballard branch are “talking about [budget] cuts and saying they don’t even know if they’re going to be open on Thursday nights.” The Ballard branch is currently open from 10 a.m.-8 p.m. on Thursdays.

“It seemed like they wanted us to be in person, but then they’re saying, ‘We don’t know if you’re going to be able to be in person anymore,’” Sturdivant says. “We cost them almost nothing, offer a program unlike any other that’s offered at any branch. Why wouldn’t they want to claim us?”

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SPL’s head of communications Laura Gentry said over email that as the city struggles with budget deficits, “we are evaluating a wide array of potential options to balance our budget, and are still determining the best course of action.” 

“The library is unaware of an existing agreement to host [It’s About Time] at the Ballard Branch in perpetuity,” Gentry said, explaining that the branch did sign a memorandum of agreement with the group during the pandemic that stated library staff would help provide technical support to host the program online for two years, but that MOA has since expired.

“Despite lack of a current MOA in place, the Ballard Branch continues to host and support this program” and “more online and in-person events are being planned this year,” Gentry said, adding, “At this time … there are no changes planned for this particular program.”

In 2019, Seattle voters overwhelmingly renewed a library levy that funded 10,000 additional open hours per year at library branches for seven years. When asked how the levy’s promises might interact with potential cuts in library hours, Gentry said SPL leadership will make decisions “within the context of ensuring responsible use of levy dollars to best provide library services.”

Mayor Bruce Harrell will present his budget in September and the City Council will vote on a final budget in November. Karissa Braxton, senior communications adviser for Harrell, says that while the mayor’s office understands “how important it is to Seattle residents that we ensure quality, reliable, world-class library services for readers and visitors across our 27 locations,” she does not have any “additional news to share about changes to funding, staffing, or programming of libraries until the budget process is complete.”

For now, Sturdivant says the library is working with her to keep the series going, and after years of online readings, the series is “transitioning back to in-person as of July 11, 2024, with hopes of establishing a hybrid, or at least livestreaming, option in the future.”

For Sturdivant, the most important thing is providing “the most welcoming place to ever read for the first time,” and ensuring that for all readers, “it’s going to be 100% supportive.”

“Every month is different,” she says. “But there’s never been a bad one.”

The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.

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Journalists’ and writers’ unions call on congress to consider threats to their work in ai legislation.

Leaders of the Writers Guild of America East and West, The NewsGuild, and the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians demanded "urgent action" in a letter to Sen. Chuck Schumer.

By Katie Kilkenny

Katie Kilkenny

Labor & Media Reporter

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Major unions representing U.S. journalists, writers and other creative professionals are calling on Congress to make these workers’ needs a “core priority” in any upcoming artificial intelligence legislation.

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The unions collectively represent journalists across print, online media and broadcast, as well as film and television writers. “AI will never be a total replacement for the work of reporters, investigators, editors, podcasters, on-air anchors or film and television writers,” the letter continued.

Between September and December 2023, Schumer convened nine “AI Insight Forums” that brought together tech leaders, heads of unions and other organizations and scholars as Congress sought to start crafting legislation on the rapidly developing technology. Two signatories of Wednesday’s letter — NewsGuild president Jon Schleuss and WGA West president Meredith Stiehm — separately attended individual sessions of this series. Still, Wednesday’s letter sought to further underscore the threat that these union members face as select news companies, like G/O Media, have experimented with AI and large language models continue to ingest film and television writers’ work, despite the WGA establishing new guardrails on how entertainment studios can use the technology in its 2023 contract.

In the letter, the union leaders called for Congress to protect journalists and creative workers from being replaced by AI or having their work copied “without consent or fair compensation.” The groups asked for protections against AI being used to surveil workers and for safeguards on workers’ voice, likeness, performance and writing style. The right to bargain over AI in the workplace was also a priority for the unions.

In a statement about the letter, WGA East president and signatory Lisa Takeuchi Cullen appealed for “meaningful legislations.” She added, “AI is a rapidly advancing technology posing numerous real-world consequences. There must be strong legal guardrails put in place to ensure that this tool is not abused by companies to the detriment of a writer’s work.”

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How Stephen King Got Under Their Skin

As “Carrie” turns 50, George R.R. Martin, Sissy Spacek, Tom Hanks, the Archbishop of Canterbury and others recall the powerful impact the writer’s work has had on their lives.

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Actor, “The Green Mile”

In the late ’70s the image of Carrie covered in blood at the high school dance was already part of the national narrative — in a fun way. Struggling to afford the rent and the diapers while navigating those first years of a creative journey in the big city, I had not seen the movie nor read the book. Then a copy of “The Stand” was being gobbled up by our gang — read in a fever pitch on every subway ride and first thing in the morning. Once done, the copy was passed along to the next pair of eyes and promptly devoured.

When I finally had the paperback in my hand, I read the opening words — from Springsteen’s “Jungleland” — and disappeared into the Stephen King realm. From there, I read four of his titles in a row — and read him still.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Author, “silver nitrate” and “the seventh veil of salome” (forthcoming).

My mother was an avid horror and fantasy reader, and she owned the Spanish-language translation of his short-story collection “Night Shift.” It had an eerie cover of a hand with eyes growing out of it. I was 11 or 12 and was drawn to that cover like a mouse to cheese. At some point in high school I forced my friends to act in a couple of adaptations of the stories. I don’t think we ever finished filming them because of time constraints, though they did reaffirm my shady reputation at school: Some kids said I was a Satanist because I wore a black leather trench coat and read horror books.

George R.R. Martin

Author, “a song of ice and fire” series.

I am pretty sure I have read every one of Stephen King’s novels … and most of his short stories and novellas as well. “Pretty sure,” I said, rather than “completely sure.” King has written a lot of novels, and he writes them so fast that I might have missed one or two along the way. If so, it was only because of a lapse of attention, not a lack of interest. Once I am aware that King has a new book out, I tend to snap it up at once, take it home and … well, if I put it on my bookshelf it may linger for a while, but if I should crack it open and read the first page, my doom is sealed. There are a handful of writers whose novels, once begun, cannot be put aside. They grab hold of you, and there’s nothing to be done but read, and read, and read, all night and all day, until the tale is done.

Author, “The Book of Love”

I was 16 when I read “Skeleton Crew,” greedy for stories about other lives, other worlds, and the horrors lurking in those other places. The glorious, spendthrift volley of stories in the collection blew my mind. It opens with a banger — “The Mist” — but “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut,” “The Jaunt” and “The Raft” have stayed with me all my life. I still look at floating docks askance, and I wouldn’t go to space for anything, though, like Mrs. Todd, I now live in a rural area and delight in questionable backcountry shortcuts.

Sissy Spacek

Actor, “carrie” and “castle rock”.

Stephen King hit a nerve with “Carrie.” He created a story that gave face to the underdog, and after 50 years it still resonates.

Diablo Cody

Screenwriter, “jennifer’s body” and “lisa frankenstein”.

I identified with Carrie, but I also felt pity and disgust toward her. However, I was fascinated with the character of Chris Hargensen — she was so beyond the usual beauty queen, she was vulgar and rebellious and a regular at detention. She was a monster, yes, but she was a bad bitch ahead of her time. I think Chris must have been in my mind when I created the character of Jennifer in “Jennifer’s Body” many years later.

Tobias Picker

“Dolores Claiborne” is an irresistible novel written entirely in monologue. It brims with some of my favorite subjects for opera: murder, incest, domestic violence, workplace harassment and — of course — tortured love. When I encountered “Dolores” for the first time, I saw her as an American “Tosca,” which one critic had famously called “a shabby little shocker.” In 2011, Stephen King gave me permission to adapt “Dolores Claiborne” as an opera. I will always be grateful to him for affording me the opportunity to make a women’s trio of the shocking line “Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto,” and to put “How come you’re making a face like the devil just reached in and grabbed them little raisins you call balls” into a climactic hate duet.

U.S. Senator, Maine

I’ve known Steve for almost 30 years. One time he went with me to meet with a group of middle school students in connection with a project that I was working on. At the end of the discussion, a student raised her hand and said, “Mr. King, do you ever have nightmares?” Steve thought for a minute, looked out and smiled and said, “No, I give them to you. ” I’ve always thought that was a wonderful little moment of self-reflection by one of the country’s, and indeed the world’s, great writers.

Michael R. Jackson

Playwright/composer, “a strange loop” and “teeth”.

My most powerful recollection of reading Stephen King’s work was in his end-of-world epic “The Stand” in seventh grade. It was the longest novel I had ever read at the time, and I was utterly captivated by its story of a super flu ravaging the globe, dividing its people into camps of good and evil. More than the contagion itself, it was the painstaking way King depicted the horror of mankind’s desperate, feral nature re-emerging as society broke down that thrilled and terrified me. Though there are key differences, it was nevertheless a dark mirror of the COVID-19 to come, and the brutal tribalism that I see everywhere in our world today — left, right and center.

Jane Schoenbrun

Filmmaker, “i saw the tv glow” and “we’re all going to the world’s fair”.

I had my requisite King obsessive phase, but as a child of the video store, I think I felt the man’s influence most through movies. Not just adaptations of his work (though those were certainly among my favorites: I even have a soft spot to this day for the maligned 1985 omnibus “Cat’s Eye”), not just through his own work in the medium (though “Creepshow” was and still is a guaranteed sleepover banger), but perhaps most lastingly through his gaze on suburbia, a Rosetta stone through which we can decipher so much popular culture that followed. Alongside Spielberg (his less-morbid-but-still-sorta-morbid fellow founding Steve), King painted an eerie yet magical mythology of the American suburbs glowing like a flashlight pressed to a bedsheet. The Cold War has long ended, and now even the suburbs have begun their rot. Yet our American imagination remains firmly rooted in Derry, a space out of time that grows more sinister with each new generation that revisits and reboots it.

Justin Welby

The archbishop of canterbury.

To tell the truth, which I am meant to do, I had never read a Stephen King book until I was going to interview him for the BBC two years ago. I imagined “The Green Mile” would be interesting (an English word for worthy but not gripping). But I was captivated. The central figures are Paul Edgecomb, the compassionate head guard on death row, and John Coffey, who would now be called neurodiverse, and is falsely accused of murdering two girls. A gifted healer, he is gradually revealed as a Christ-like figure, inhaling and absorbing the evil and suffering of those around him. This is a book of tragedy and injustice, with enough of the light of hope to inspire desire for living better.

Robert Hickerson

Photographer.

Watching Brian De Palma’s 1976 adaptation of “Carrie” at the age of 13 showed me what horror can do . Carrie White was as much a victim as a villain, and while her actions were horrendous, they were understandable. King opened a door to how complicated monstrosity can be, which still permeates my entire practice. The images I make lovingly take the side of the monster.

Josh Malerman

Author, “bird box” and “incidents around the house” (forthcoming).

Stephen King’s books were the first to reveal to me the power of the book itself, the physical book, on the shelf like a haunted object, an amulet. The first of his I saw was “Pet Sematary” on a friend’s night stand. When I went to pick it up, Jonny said, “Watch out with that one, man,” and I actually pulled my hand back, as if the paperback could bite. King’s books felt (and still feel) alive , boxes of dark energy, occult matter. I’d soon find in his books a truth we weren’t necessarily taught in school: a book can be every bit as mighty as rock ‘n’ roll, as your favorite movie, as love.

Clémence Michallon

Author, “the quiet tenant”.

I first read “Carrie” in 2022, at the ancient age of 31. My excuses: I was born in France and, as a young adult, I scared easily. I had to get good enough at English, and I had to get brave. Those things take time.

I loved the book instantly. And the infamous locker room scene brought back a memory:

I was at school, standing in a hallway, waiting for class to start, when a boy tapped my shoulder and handed me a small toiletry bag. I was utterly confused: the bag, which contained pads and tampons, belonged to me. It lived in my backpack, in a zippered pocket. It couldn’t have fallen out.

For a second, nothing made sense. Then it clicked: the boy had evidently opened my backpack, pulled out the bag, looked inside, seen the pads and tampons, and was now returning it with — pardon my French — an absolute shit-eating grin on his face, friends giggling at his side. I should have been outraged, but all I felt was a burning embarrassment. I took it back without a word.

Like so many girls, I directed my shame and anger inward. Carrie White undergoes much deeper humiliations. But she directs her anger outward — flamboyantly, destructively so.

Mick Garris

Director, “bag of bones,” “the shining” and “the stand”.

The first book by Stephen King that I ever read was his second novel, “’Salem’s Lot,” and I read every other one after that as soon as it came out. Here was a vampire story that was set in a setting we know — small-town America, not the Carpathian Mountains — peopled with characters we know, or even characters we are. I was writing imaginative, but family-friendly scripts, like “Hocus Pocus” and “*batteries not included”; “’Salem’s Lot” set me free to create from a much darker place.

Jeff VanderMeer

Author, the southern reach trilogy.

My first was “The Dead Zone,” which I still think about a couple of times a month. The melding of an intense character study with not just the uncanny, but also the political realm, had a profound effect on me. Just to demonstrate how long a book can stick with you, I’m working on a new novel series that in part owes a debt to “The Dead Zone.”

Compiled by Scott Heller

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Writers at Work: From Sentence to Paragraph Student's Book New Edition

• ISBN-10 0521120306
• ISBN-13 978-0521120302
• Edition New
• Publisher Cambridge University Press
• Publication date August 30, 2010
• Language English
• Dimensions 8.5 x 0.5 x 10.5 inches
• Print length 184 pages
• See all details

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Book description, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press; New edition (August 30, 2010)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 184 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0521120306
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0521120302
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.04 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 0.5 x 10.5 inches
• #2,693 in Rhetoric (Books)
• #7,242 in Foreign Language Instruction (Books)
• #7,713 in English as a Second Language Instruction

About the authors

Laurie blass.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Deborah Gordon

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A follow-up message to the campus community about the protest at Kirkland Hall on March 26, 2024

Media inquiries.

• 615-322-6397 Email

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• Vanderbilt University Statement – March 28, 2024

Mar 28, 2024, 9:07 AM

March 27, 2024

Dear Vanderbilt community,

I am writing with an update on yesterday’s occupation of Kirkland Hall.

All students remaining inside Kirkland left voluntarily around 6 a.m. after forcibly entering the building [see video] shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday. All protest participants who breached the building will be placed on interim suspension.

The Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County Magistrate’s Office has charged three students with Class A misdemeanor assault for pushing a Community Service Officer as well as a staff member who offered to meet with them as they entered Kirkland Hall on Tuesday. A fourth student has been charged with vandalism after breaking a window in the building’s exterior Tuesday evening.

A reporter was detained outside the building after making repeated attempts to enter several locked doors that were clearly marked as such and being asked to leave. He was later released and not charged.

Another group of student protesters gathered outside the building this morning. The university will work with them to help ensure that their protest remains consistent with the university’s policies for peaceful demonstration.

Free expression is a core value at Vanderbilt, as is civil discourse. Our policies allow for members of the Vanderbilt community to protest and demonstrate regarding issues they care deeply about, and dozens of peaceful demonstrations have occurred in recent months. In consideration of safety and the university’s normal operations, we, as a matter of policy, define the time, place and manner limitations. The safety and well-being of our community is a top priority. The university will take action when our policies are violated, when the safety of our campus is jeopardized and when people intimidate or injure members of our community.

A university community, by definition, will rarely be in full agreement on any issue. The challenge is to move forward together despite our differences, based on our shared values and common purpose. This is what we must do—and what we shall do in the days to come.

Daniel Diermeier Chancellor

• March 26: A message to the campus community from the provost on the protest at Kirkland Hall

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Tensions run high inside The Wall Street Journal as staffers worry about a spike in disciplinary meetings and potential further layoffs

• WSJ staffers participated in a work stoppage as tensions rise over ongoing contract talks and cuts.
• Some insiders said they felt people had been targeted unfairly for underperformance.
• People are also reeling from deep DC bureau cuts they worry will threaten the paper's journalism. 

Tensions are reaching a boil at The Wall Street Journal, where union members participated in a rare, 15-minute coordinated work stoppage Thursday and accused editor in chief Emma Tucker 's leadership of targeting people for dismissal.

Multiple bureaus participated in the break to support their union in ongoing contract talks, according to IAPE TNG CWA Local 1096, which represents employees at Journal parent News Corp. Participants included around 70 from the New York office, per IAPE.

A Journal rep declined to comment.

The effort came at a nervous time for the Journal newsroom. It's still reeling from February, when the paper sharply cut its DC newsroom , its second-biggest bureau after New York. Thirty were targeted for layoffs, including some longtime staffers, IAPE said. Tucker wrote at the time that the DC bureau changes were enacted to put the company in the position to serve readers better and stand out from the competition.

In a separate action on Wednesday, Dion Nissenbaum, a longtime Journal reporter who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, was laid off. Nissenbaum was based in Beirut in 2020 when his apartment was hit by an explosion , injuring him and his daughter, and many colleagues took to social media this week to protest his layoff. One current staffer, who asked for anonymity for fear of job repercussions, likened it to firing Evan Gershkovich, their colleague who's been held in a Russian prison for the past year.

There's also a mounting fear that the Journal is targeting others for dismissal. IAPE rep Tim Martell said that, since February 1, 20 people have requested union representation at disciplinary meetings in which they've been told they're underperforming, despite having no previous record of performance issues. In a typical year, he said, the union is involved in around 55.

The suspicion is the meetings are a precursor to financially motivated firings; members don't get severance under the union contract if they're let go for underperformance. The union has filed grievances over the DC bureau layoffs and is considering filing grievances over the meetings, Martell said.

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A second current staffer, a longtime Journal reporter, said they were pulled into one of these meetings, despite having no history of performance problems, and told to increase productivity significantly. They also asked for anonymity for fear of job repercussions.

"It's really upsetting. They're stonewalling our stories, and it feels like a big game of gaslighting," this person said, adding that a handful of others who were also targeted were aged late 40s and up.

The anxiety in The Wall Street Journal newsroom has grown over the past year since Tucker was brought over from The Sunday Times in London, another Rupert Murdoch paper, to be the Journal's new editor in chief.

Tucker initially got positive reviews from staff. She replaced top editors, did away with long-standing editorial practices like using honorifics such as "Mr." and "Ms.," and called for livelier writing and more enterprise reporting over commodity-type stories.

But the mood among some has turned as Tucker has enacted layoffs in a newsroom that's largely been spared staff cuts. The Journal also isn't in the same boat as many media outlets that have been cutting staff in the face of a soft ad market and migration of ad dollars online — News Corp. has reported strong results lately.

"What really crystallized it for the union workforce was the company decimating a news bureau like the DC location and crossing off years of experience for the sake of adding to their bottom line," Martell said. "We've not experienced layoffs in a major news bureau to the extent they made layoffs in Washington in February. That sends a message that nobody is safe from job cuts."

Some have also complained that Tucker and her leadership have been opaque and resistant to answering staff questions about the changes. These people worried that the paper's very journalism is under threat.

"It's changed from a place where people were super happy to scared — they're all looking over their shoulder," the first current staffer said.

Do you have a tip or information to share about this story? Contact Lucia Moses at [email protected] or (917) 209-8549 on text/Signal/WhatsApp using a non-work device.

Watch: How badly has the writers' strike hurt the entertainment industry?

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