Gannett, Gatehouse talking merger

I read once where the downfall of Frank Howard as the Mets manager is that he was too much in love with meetings and the players rebelled. Apparently one guy said, "we had a game rained out and we had a meeting to go over the rain."

 

Jim Bouton wrote in Ball Four about how Mel McGaha, when he managed the KC A’s, once held a meeting on a Friday night during spring training. Players were upset because they had to leave their families or their dates, for the meeting. They show up, McGaha thanks them for coming, and says they’re not really having a meeting and that he just wanted to see how fast everyone could get together if they needed to on short notice.

 

I did have a boss once who said this would be a 25 minute meeting and if anyone wanted to stay and ask questions at the end they could. It was a 25 minute meeting and nobody stayed. Probably would have been a one hour meeting otherwise since people figure as such and will interrupt with questions. The questions at the end thing really works, because a lot of people think meetings are mainly there for people to listen to them. If everyone else leaves at the end, there is no point.

 

I once worked at a place where we would have a meeting to discuss what we would be talking about in the later meeting. The old pre-meeting meeting.

 

I just got out of journalism and we seem to have meetings to discuss future meetings. And we’re not the suits.

 

Drove me insane.

We had an executive editor once whose answer for just about everything was a meeting. Lashed me over 18 inches when a woman from West Virginia didn't like a crack I'd made about a certain West By God town. He got fired, more or less, but got a golden parachute and then went to another good sized paper in the state.

Got the gas there, too.

I'm sure there were lots of meetings there, too.

 

If you absolutely have to have a meeting, that’s the way to do it.

 

I dealt with crap like that when I worked in state government in South Carolina. Saw this group in a conference room and asked someone what was going on. The reply: they’re having a meeting to plan a meeting. I mean WTF.

 

Meetings are for the suits to show other suits they are actually in charge. There should never be a meeting in a newsroom. Some people have to work.

 

Hey! I worked at a Gannett shop, too!

 

Agree 100 percent.

 

Back in the day, on Sundays instead of having a full-blown budget meeting, 3 or 4 of us would get together around the main copy desk and be done in about 5 minutes, if that. One Sunday, the editor happened to be in for something and he made us all go to the conference room and have a full-scale meeting. It took about 25-30 minutes and was a waste of time.