More changes at Breeze

Longtime business section editor Martin Romjue has left the paper, and his position will be eliminated. Reporter Muhammed El-Hasan will stay on and handle some of the biz section duties. The paper has been trimming its workforce for some time - editorial, ad people, pressmen, and even janitorial staff - as it continues to transition into Dean Singleton's Los Angeles Newspaper Group. This includes the move towards "common pages" between the Daily News, Daily Breeze and Press-Telegram (business sections are believed to be part of that). Here's Singleton's recent eight-page report to employees where he tries to explain why this is such a good thing:

We have also been very creative about how content is produced, with an emphasis on maintaining quality and localness while sharing resources among newspapers and on making these changes transparent to the reader. Most noticeably, these changes in content gathering and editing have been taking place in our newsrooms in the East Bay Area and in Southern California.

This week, the Breeze's Web site adopted the template being used by the Daily News, Press-Telegram, etc.