Union-Tribune revamps video news

The Union-Tribune TV news is back in action after being off the air since February 2014. Now called the San Diego News Fix, the program debuted on Cox and Spectrum.

Luis Cruz, a U-T TV veteran producer who is now the paper’s director of community and public relations, hosts the show with the company’s TV sports personality Annie Heilbrunn.

“Promoting journalism and talking about how it can impact and help our viewers and readers is something I have been doing throughout my career. The fact that they’re paying me to do it is the only difference,” Cruz added.

The overhaul has been five years in the making and attempts to correct the outlet’s troubled past. In 2014, the publication opted to pull back after insiders said the organization was losing $500,000 a month. In 2018, it was also reported by The Washington Post that then-ambassadorial nominee and UT Publisher Doug Manchester and sidekick John Lynch had run the video operation as a private playground to gawk at female anchors.

One unnamed former honcho privy to closed meetings told the Post: “Before discussing candidates’ professional qualifications, Manchester and other senior leaders sometimes discussed which ones were ‘hot,’ ‘beautiful,’ and ‘just gorgeous.’” Added the ex-executive: “It was a boys club, and the boys picked which women they wanted.”

Manchester sold the paper to Tronc in 2015, which unloaded it to Los Angeles billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong three years later.