911's (allegedly) a joke at Indy Star

Whatever the truth is, I've read more Ruth Holladay today than I have in the nearly two decades I've spent in Indiana preceding it.

And reading these accounts, something is rotten in Denmark on both sides of the equation. Pretty much every company I've worked for, including some considered more soulless than Gannett, have procedures to deal with this in place, at the very least, in their employee handbooks.

For me, the bigger issue than 911 as far as the Star is concerned is the elevator and lack of access to Mpozi. That's definitely more damning, but is that a Gannett issue per se, or a non-compliance issue with the Star's in-house management? The Star office, like many other major metros, is maze-like and wasn't designed for the 21st Century.

Whatever. It's been interesting "fuck you" to Star management from a respected local columnist, one that Ryerson lauded in his own column when she retired a few weeks ago. Or it could be a sad "fuck you", I can't decide.

 

Having read Ruth quasi-regularly over the years, she was not a "must" read. She missed many more than she hit from a column perspective and was neither a wordsmith nor an intrepid reporter. She was a female column voice who was typically mediocre and rarely memorable. There were few, if any, female columnists at the paper and they kept her around because it was easy to do so. As demands were made on her to up her game, she proved incapable and smartly left before the decision to demote her would have had to have been made.

In a nutxhell, she committed the unpardonable columnist sin...she was boring.

That being said, she did leave on fairly good terms. The blog appears to be a desperate attempt to stay relevant. Read it for yourself and decide if she needs an editor.

And keep a close watch on her grasp of facts. It was a constant problem in print and will be even moreso in blog-land.

 

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=62&aid=105311

This thing is not going away any time soon.