If I were Howard Berkes, I'd be mad enough to spit nails.

Berkes, the rural affairs correspondent for National Public Radio and based out of Salt Lake City, this week had to deal with layoffs at NPR (he's the union steward for the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists) - and with a false blog posting that said he was one of those losing a job.

"I have not been laid off," Berkes told the Tribune's Vince Horiuchi on Thursday. "There was a blog posting that had no basis in fact."

That blog posting was on Gawker.com, which also put veterans Linda Wertheimer and Noah Adams on the chopping block - only to take their names off the "laid off" list later. Berkes called the blog posting "a distraction we don't need."

Labels: NPR, recession

Every day we see signs, both large and small, of how bad the recession is.

Consider these indicators, many of them from today's Salt Lake Tribune:

• KraftMaid Cabinetry will close its West Jordan factory on Dec. 23 - putting between 300 and 500 people out of work just before Christmas.
• Bally's Total Fitness abruptly closed its two gyms in Utah on Wednesday, leaving 8,000 customers scrambling to get refunds and find a new place to sweat.
• Office Depot will close 110 stores in North America in the next three months. Two of those are in Utah, at the Gateway in downtown Salt Lake City and in Murray.
• You may have noticed that those little Circus Animal cookies aren't in stock anymore. That's because Mother's Cookies, the company that makes them, shut down in October.
  
• Salt Lake City's franchise of the ritzy Ruth's Chris Steak House chain is shutting down Jan. 10 - as the restaurant's local owner, Gene Kwon, is being sued by his creditors.
• And the erotic bakery across the street from The Gateway has cut back its in-store hours to Friday and Saturday only. (Phone orders still will be taken Tuesday-Saturday.)

What's the sign you've seen of how hard times are? Send it to me, either in the comments or at my e-mail, vulture@sltrib.com.

Labels: recession