4 laid off from Post-Dispatch return, 5 others leaving

Two weeks ago, the Post-Dispatch laid off 20 people, including reporters Patrick O’Connell and Christine Byers, copy editor Colleen Schrappen and designer Elizabeth Baird.

Under the guild contract, employees with more seniority could volunteer to be laid off, which is what has happened. O’Connell, Byers, Schrappen and Baird return to work today. In the next month, reporters Bill Lhotka, Jerri Stroud and Jo Mannies will retire and Mary Jo Feldstein and Angie Leventis will resign.

Lhotka has been at the paper for 35 years, often covering the St. Louis County Courthouse in Clayton. In 1981 he was a defendant in Green v. Alton Telegraph, a libel case over a memo that was never published. In 1992, Kenneth Baumruk walked into that courthouse, where this divorce case was being heard, carrying two handguns in a briefcase. He shot his wife in the neck and head, killing her; shot his attorney and his wife’s attorney, and shot at the judge. Baumruk left the courtroom, shooting the bailiff and a security guard before two police officers shot him nine times. After Baumruk shot his wife but before he was shot and captured, he ran into Lhotka in an elevator. (Baumruk is now on death row.) Lhotka’s last day is Oct. 31.

Stroud has been at the paper for 33 years. She has been covering banking and finance since 1981 and has written a weekly finance column for the last year. Appropriately enough, last week’s column was about what to do after you’ve been laid off. Her last day is Oct. 31.

Mannies has been at the paper for 32 years. For the past 18 years she has been the paper’s chief political correspondent. If it’s happening in Missouri politics, she knows about it and has already reported it. Mannies writes a weekly column, started blogging two years ago and recently joined Twitter to cover the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Mannies last day has not been announced, but I’m sure it will be after Election Day.

Feldstein has been at the paper for four years. She covers the business side of health care and writes a weekly column. Her last day is Oct. 31.

Leventis has been at the paper for two years; in fact, her last day, Oct. 31, will be her two-year anniversary. (We also worked together at The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., in 2003.) She recently got married and is moving to Chicago.