'Black Wednesday' in Tampa

Boy, the "lovely and talented Jessice" has been at the pool drinking a beer in honor of America for 18 hours now.

Wonder if she's used some of that quality time to actually let some of what has been written in the comments section of her blog sink in.

 

She may be trying to get those big lips unstuck from a beer bottle.

 

Good for the GA guy (I know who you are talking about). Not sure on the other end. But best you can tell, they actually were trying to relocate for the UF position?

 

It's about to end, and not well.

 

Longtime listener, first time caller.

Grew up in Tampa. The glory days of the Trib are obviously looooooooong gone, as y'all who are closer to it than I are no doubt aware.

I feel badly for everybody who believes in this profession, who gives it their heart, their soul (and, in too many cases, their marriages and other important relationships) and has those things ripped apart by bottom-line beancounters who couldn't put a coherent sentence together if their lives depended on it.

Miss Blonde Intern is, I fear, the wave of the future. Bimbo doesn't begin to describe it.

But her ME deserves to be smacked for saying that she's a journalist even before she's a mother.

No, moron, you're a human being first. At least, you were once, before you got into newspaper management.

It's like the old joke often told in TV newsrooms: How are a sperm and a news director alike? They each have a one-in-a-million shot at becoming a human being.

 

Welcome, c_u.

That said, I'd like to appreciate those sentiments -- I've expressed them myself at times, in my own slightly less venomous way, I hope -- but, to be fair, I also want to say that there are still some great, perceptive, imaginative and compassionate editors/managers in the business.

Not enough, mind you, but they're out there, I know, because I've worked for/with some of them. So, I don't think people at those levels of newspapers can be, nor should they be, all lumped in and compared to what went on in Tampa.

I'm going to cut that ME a little slack and say, you know what, I wouldn't envy her having to make such an announcement/have such a discussion with her staff. I'd even say that probably the worst thing about what she said (in terms of the business, not her family life) was just that we've heard it all before. And she treated her staff as if they hadn't, or as if they were unwilling to change, when, let's face it, almost all papers and the people in them have been undergoing nothing but change for the last five to 10 years now.

The problem is, everyone needs to quit talking, and come up with real, workable ideas and solutions -- some potential ones the likes of which have even been suggested here on various threads -- and begin trying and implementing them.

Instead of just cutting people first, and changing later, that is.

 

Of course Write, as you typed this entry more cuts were being planned somewhere else without any regard to how a quality product will be produced.

 

I was prepared to chalk up Miss Intern's post as a mistake of the young and oblivious. We have all been there. We have all made mistakes. But before the internet, if you were in New York and an intern fucked up in Florida, you never knew about it.

Then I read her twitter. And I went back a few pages. And I saw this stretch. There is no excuse for how this makes me feel:

jdasilva: Did I just work an 11-hour shift? Yes. Yes, I did. 08:02 PM July 01, 2008

jdasilva: somber atmosphere in the newsroom today. who will the 10 be? 09:35 AM July 02, 2008

jdasilva: the newsroom is empty. people are out on depressing layoff lunches. i wanted to go, but i have too much work to do. 12:31 PM July 02, 2008

jdasilva: one story down, one to go. 01:24 PM July 02, 2008

jdasilva: gasp! is that me on paul conley's blog? YES! http://tinyurl.com/4byrh6 03:49 PM July 02, 2008

jdasilva: Janet Weaver is my hero. I'll explain later in a blog post. 05:48 PM July 02, 2008

jdasilva: Shit, I meant Janet Coats. My apologies, everyone. I should know that. 06:23 PM July 02, 2008

 

She probably watched too much "ER" and was confusing any female authority figure perambulating around the workplace with the aid of a crutch or crutches with Dr. Kerry Weaver.

 

Mick IS a good guy. Saw him a couple months ago in Palm Coast at a Champions Tour event.

Moddy, is he still covering golf? Or is a paper covering an area with one PGA Tour event, two 90 minutes down the road in Orlando, a Champions Tour event and an LPGA event down the road in Orlando going to scramble?

Bad enough that the St. Pete Times "ushered" a talented writer like Bob Harig out the door because they didn't want to play in the big leagues anymore.

And that intern's blog entry? After I finished throwing up in my mouth, I thought to myself that if that's the future, I'm glad my tenure in the biz is past.