Copy editor, New Jersey

To: Remaining Sports Staff

From: A.B., Sports Editor


It has come to my attention that some of you think I have been crying in the office. This could not be further from the truth. In reality, I suffer from very bad allergies, and it may appear from my watery eyes, quivering lips, and nonstop sniffling, that I am weeping. But I am not.

Please make a note of this.

cc: Union

 

Funny... I don't remember him suffering from allergies that bad at one of his previous stops

 

How much are the staff problems - with people leaving/getting suspended Aaron's doing and how much of it is his superiors doing it?

 

Aaron Bracy, you knew the situation when you took the job.

Your record is here. You are a disaster.

You have embarrassed yourself and your name. Any place hiring you will face questions from people working at that place. You are disgracing this profession. You will be treated as a pariah.

There is no question that this is being read in your shop. If you ignore this thread (and I highly doubt this is the case) you can't ignore the situation.

You should be ashamed.

 

What a load of crap. Hey Jon and Jay get the hell out of there while you still can on your own terms. I think it's time to teach the brain trust at The Trentonian and JRC a lesson. And the only way they are going to learn it is if one night there's no one there to get the paper out. Then they will be embarrassed into fixing the situation.

 

Aaron is a major part of this week's three resignations. His verbal abuse, harassment, leaving the building early while the worn-out desk tries desperately to get pages done and proofed, etc. directly played a role in all three of the employees' decisions to leave. That should tell you what a jerk this guy is, or has become. When two employees are able to put up with standard Trentonian and JRC harassment for 13 and 11 years, respectively, and they quit within three months of Aaron's arrival, something is seriously wrong. Even for JRC, his tactics of harrassment are low, and that takes a lot for me to say that.

Now, Joe, he has hired your buddy Red, who will start Monday. Brilliant. He hires a writer, one of his good friends, to replace the 4 fired/resigned copy editors. I guess the Trentonian must sound like a better job than school cafeteria worker. I would disagree, though.

Tack on edit: Thanks, Gold. I didn't read your post until I had already just posted this. He really has embarrassed himself.

 

Wow this guy sounds real sharp. Is he reallythat stupid or is he just trying to toe the JRC line

 

Sometimes you have to take out the trash to get the stink out of the room. No one here is saying the sports section was anything worth speaking of at any point in recent memory. Certainly wouldn't be the first time someone walked into a disaster and found the only way to fix it to let people leave and start fresh. With all the cuts estreetjoe talks about at his place, maybe there's a decent talent pool to select from. Hard to take seriously all the talk from a group of self-professed disgruntled JRC people. Not like we're talking about the Dallas Morning New here being torn down.
We're so eager to rip on Aaron. How about someone post the names of the people who left and we'll offer up comments on them. That seems the only fair way to do it.

 

Thanks for your contribution Aaron, oh, I mean Aeroking.

 

Mr. Hobbs, do you have anything to add to this site other than your obsession with Aaron Bracy?

 

Wouldn't call Red a buddy.. just a long-time former co-worker that I got along well with (I haven't had the chance to talk to him since he left the paper). So will Red continue to write or is he just going to do desk? As valuable as Red is as a writer (he's been stringing for them the last year or so since the layoffs up the street), his knowledge of area sports will probably be more valuable on the desk.

As for Aaron leaving before the product is done at night, no comment except to say he's doing things differently than one of his former bosses who stays until the end each night he's in slot.

 

The recent talk about this paper has caused me to drive 25 miles out of my way today to buy it for the first time in a real long time. I was curious to see how it's changed since I left many years ago.

The paper today just looked awful. It's smaller than it was in past years. It's thinner than it was in past years. Joe Logue's probably rolling over in his grave. Who is this Bracey guy? From quickly reading these posts it sounds like a young 25-year old novice. Wait, did he work for The Times back in the earlier part of this decade? How old can he be? Before being Sports Editor there was he ever anything more than a writer or copy editor?

Some things I just have to laugh at when reading that paper. In today's paper, I saw there wasn't any high school baseball games covered, the tennis state tournament wasn't staffed and buried in a roundup, no college baseball was staffed, and a prep golf tournament wasn't covered either. Yet, flip back a few more pages and you see two full pages for high school softball. On one of those pages is a story of a Seneca vs. Paul VI game by an apparent stringer. Neither team is within 40 miles of that paper.

Had to laugh when I saw that. Some things never change. The softball writer there does whatever he wants and gets whatever he wants and covers whatever he wants. Yet, somehow no one else at that place can. Can anyone even confirm if that stringer is a real person? I know from past years when this softball writer wanted some extra cash, he'd make up names of stringers and write stories himself. And I don't know anything about this Bracey guy, but let me take a wild guess: he's scared stiff of the softball writer and will let him do/get away with whatever he pleases. And chances are, this softball writer makes a fool out him.

It's hard to take a newspaper seriously, when a sports editor who from what I hear is allowed a scarce amount of stringers to use a week, decides to use one of those stringers for a Seneca vs. Paul VI softball game, while passing over a high school baseball game or tennis state semifinals or pivotal end-of-the-year college baseball games.

A lot of things seemingly change daily at that paper. Workers come and go every month. Some things never though.