Matthew Kredell was a Daily News sports writer who lost his job in the Feb. 29 payroll purge. A kid from El Camino Real High in Woodland Hills and USC, he enjoyed working sports for his hometown paper even though they kept him in a part-time slot and his yearly take-home dropped each year. "I put up with it and was told my loyalty would eventually be rewarded," he told blogger Paul Oberjuerge. Kredell tells how it ended for him:

On the Wednesday when the layoffs were officially announced as going to take place Friday, I went in for a meeting and was told I was in no danger. I would continue on the Kings beat in my 29-hour position. The only way I would be affected is that I would have to help out with some preps during the NHL offseason. Then on Thursday afternoon I get a call from [Kevin] Modesti and Gene [Warnick] saying there was a new development....

All part-time positions were being cut. However, I had the choice to take a full-time position covering preps. I said I would take it and I would work whatever extra hours were necessary to finish up the Kings season on top of the preps work. Thursday evening, they tell me that Ron Kaye ran into a roadblock trying to get my full-time position past HR. Now they didn’t know what would happen. Then Friday they tell me they couldn’t get me the full-time position.

Ever since I graduated from USC in May of 2001, I worked full time for the Daily News in a part-time local position without benefits. I was paid for 40 hours about half the time as well. Most of the rest of the time, I got about 35 hours. It was only over the last 10 months that I regularly got the 29 of my position. I was a local guy who grew up reading the Daily News at El Camino Real High in Woodland Hills, so I put up with it and was told my loyalty would eventually be rewarded. But once I moved up to doing the USC basketball beat (which I traveled on) and the Kings beat, any full-time positions that opened up were frozen. So I was laid off because I was stuck in a part-time local position while doing full-time pro and college beat jobs.

I’m looking at this as a positive, though. (Former LADN staffer) Howard Beck said he doesn’t know of anyone worse off for having left the Daily News. I subscribe to this theory. If stuck in the part-time position, I was going to make 34k this year, my fourth consecutive year making less than the year before. So now I’m trying to figure out what to do next.

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