Blood in the streets of Hartford and Baltimore

Clyde Bentley, is that you?

 

Even though you probably saved, what, half of what it would've normally cost to stay there.

Brilliant thinking, suits. This is why we're in the shit we're in now.

 

Jean Marbella of The Sun writes about seeing mass layoffs in her own industry after writing about problems in others for decades.

<blockquote>I was looking through the archives and was stunned at how often I've written about layoffs - in other businesses, not my own. Companies merged, entire industries faltered, and I covered the stories, never imagining my own company or my own industry would ever be the one merging or faltering. It's the reporter's remove: You're the guy standing over on the side, watching the house burn or the plane crashing.

One of the many and uniformly depressing journalism blogs estimated that almost 1,000 newspaper jobs went away last week. Like many reporters, I feel like I've done nothing but attend funerals these past years - my social life appears to revolve around retirement parties.</blockquote>

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.marbella01jul01,0,5318854.column

 

Does it really not trouble anybody that the feasting like vultures and swilling of who knows what by those APSE lazy slobs could feed the poor for years??

The APSE convention is a perfect marriage of gluttonous blubber and IQ points in the minus. How can anyone let something like that continue?? It's deplorable.

It is said that a few years back, the APSE fat cats with no-talent long-termers on their staffs paid expenses for small-potatoes SEs to get to the convention in what was not exactly an exchange for contest votes, but, um, wink-wink, and, well, Long Beach IS nice this time of year. No one can point fingers at French skating judges or other judged sports' cartels if they belong to APSE. Guess those bloated morons will have to do a full disclosure (please, though, not of their cholesterol counts or IQs!!!!)

 

Well, that certainly is a load of shit, FF.

Haven't been for years. Conventions have had a lot of great and uplifting things, ideas that sent SEs back to their offices ready to make their sections -- and things in general -- better for everybody.

Judging is simply a lot of work, with almost nothing free, the SE's papers picking up the tab.

Ask the small potatoes SEs how much some of them benefited from being able to attend things they normally wouldn't have been able to on APSE's dime. And how they and their papers were the better for it.

Schmoozing, eating and drinking?

Sure.

A lot of real benefits for newspaper sports sections?

Absolutely.

I have a sense that you've never been to either judging or a convention. If you have, and that's all you took out of it, you must not have been paying very good attention. Maybe you were too busy eating and drinking to reap all the real professional benefits.

 

Good points.

But the thought of their being actual judging in 2009 strikes a raw nerve with me.

It's like holding a beauty contest . . . after all the contestants went on starvation diets and lost 25 percent of their weight.

Yes, someone will be the best of the lot.

But none will be better than any who won the year before.

 

I was actually talking to somebody about this in a bar the other night, local newspaper guy.

I can understand your point, but you know what? Finding out who can put out the best sections under the circumstances -- who can accomplish more with less -- might make this one of the more interesting contests in years. Because maybe it WON'T be the papers that always used to just throw a zillion dollars into the section and overwhelm everybody.

 

Sorry, FH, my bad for extending the off-topic trail.