Greeley (Co.) Tribune lays off sports department

What's really sad is that those former newspaper peoples' stories are all too familiar — and have been for a decade or more.

 

Mike Hunt would be scoring 20 points a night.

 

“Citizen Journalist” is one of the great oxymorons that greed-infected ownership has tried to create. I’m not going to a Citizen Surgeon if I need a triple bypass etc.

 

The suits think "anybody can do this job." Case closed. Considering upper management/hedge fund management is the worst ever in journalism, I can't believe the suits constantly berate those in the trenches and are lapdogs for upper management types.

 

Option D: He’s just there to monitor the bottom line and is too chickenshit to at least tell readers the truth.

I think that applies to all of them, pretty much.

 

I get the outrage here: The guys dumped two veteran reporters and made the product worse. But these types of decisions don't require much analysis.

Publishers have 2 jobs, now more than ever: 1) Squeeze every possible penny they can out of their paper so that the people making money can get out of Dodge just before it all finally collapses, and 2) Package these moves to the public to give off the slightest notion that they actually are trying to make the product better.

This guy followed the classic playbook.

First, instead of "talented, veteran journalists," he saw "two of the highest paid people in the newsroom." So he got rid of them and replaced them with some agate clerk. Second, instead of "we're just trying to squeeze out pennies, no matter the product," he used terms like "crowdsourcing," "innovative" and "better serve our readers" to make it look to readers like he gives a shit.

He gets a pat on the back, maybe a bonus or a raise when it's due, and it all happens again soon.

 

That's why Fredrick hates suits so much. Not everybody needs to be a liar/sellout.

 

If you're going to be a publisher at these DFM, Gannett-run papers....yeah you do. It's how they rose to the position in the first place.