Edmonton columnist Terry Jones' position eliminated by Post Media

Wow, very sad. Besides myself and Gretzky, he might have been the only other person to witness both the Miracle on Manchester and the Comeback on Katella.

 

Nice. A phone call. I guess a letter would have cost postage. Pretty sad when management at Post Media doesn't even have the guts to fire you face-to-face.

Good luck, Terry. Enjoy the rest of your life. You fought the good fight.

 

Jones' firing was just one of many plus buyouts conducted by Postmedia in recent days. At least one other prominent Western sports reporter was axed but chose not to go public about it. Yes, it was a terrible way to let Jones go. I hear the brass had been trying to get him to retire for a while. Apparently, the Postmedia poo-bahs (who are a uniformly bunch of bad people) got tired of the coaxing and went for the sledge hammer.

 

How is a buyout a sledgehammer? How much did he get?

 

OK, let's spell it out. He got fired. He didn't get a buyout, he got severance, probably the minimum, which should still be pretty good given how long he was there, somewhere around 2 yrs pay. He did not get a farewell column or a farewell press conference or a big farewell party. If Jones had agreed to a buyout and retired, it probably would have been more than his severance. But he kept saying no, so instead he got a phone call and the boot. No presser, no party, no farewell column, just a farewell tweet.
To a guy like Jones, who has been an institution in Edmonton for nearly 50 years, that's a frigging sledgehammer.
The bosses are still arseholes but they're in charge.

 

Wow. I worked at one place 10 years and got a full years' severance.

 

I'll play devil's advocate. I used to work for Postmedia. I was just a desk monkey and was eventually laid off. Best thing that ever happened to me.
If what is written above is correct that they asked him to retire in the past and he refused then it's his own fault.
It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out in this day and age that if you keep refusing to retire eventually they are going to retire you. Call it a firing if you want. He had the chance to get his cake and pats on the back and opted not too. How many people in this business would love the chance to leave on their own terms and don't get that chance. He could have.
He knows the company is run by assholes.
If it happened to George Johnson (a brilliant sports columnist up here) it could happen to Terry Jones too.
A call from Toronto is for sure cold. Surprise surprise it's a cold business.
For the record I have never met him and hold no opinion about him as a person. I don't know if he's a good writer because he wrote for the Sun papers when I was still reading newspapers and I never read the Sun sports section. I'm told he has been a must-read since the days of Gretzky but who's really reading newspapers anymore.

 

I will take the other side.

I remember looking at a coffee table book of photographs by someone who worked on Denver paper for something like 65 years. He said the function he most hated to shoot were retirement ceremonies. The person being honored was often wearing the forced smile of someone being pushed out. The words of praise came from the pusher and rang of insincerity. Basically everything about the ceremony was a a sham.

I think it is a perfectly rational response to say the hell with the retirement cake and a plaque from someone you despises and hang on to the bitter end rather than participating in a ruse.

I say this as someone who had never heard of Terry Jones or even been to Alberta.

 

This is the last generation of honored retirements in print.

 

Textbook example of this was when I worked for a 40K daily in the Midwest about 15 years ago. Guy who had been on the copy desk for decades, working nights until the end, retires.

So they have the cake and parting gifts ceremony at noon — five hours before this man and his colleagues usually start their shift. Hey, that was more convenient for management. The retiring desker and his wife showed up … the rest of his coworkers saw a sheet cake platter with fossilized crumbs when we got to work.

We had our own retirement party after the shift, which undoubtedly was more fun. And involved more alcohol!

 

The business will never love you back.