Blood in the streets of Hartford and Baltimore

This is just crazy. You don't have much to cut at this paper and yet you're cutting. I wonder if this becomes one of the first big-city papers to go under and leave a city without a daily.

I wasn't a huge fan of the Sun before (too bland looking and not enough content), but this last year has been an absolute nightmare for them.

 

Here's John McIntyre's final post from his Blog! at The Sun. He is clearly the kind of wild-eyed person who needs to be watched by a security guard after being fired.

A Good Run
When in 2006 I celebrated my 20th anniversay at The Baltimore Sun, my wife, Kathleen Capcara, made a magnificent cake for the copy desk and wrote on it, "20 to life."

I did not anticipate then an early parole.

Yesterday, the grim economics of the newspaper business made April 28 my last day at the paper. It was, as they say in theatrical circles, a good run. I had more than two decades of the company of some of the smartest and funniest people I have ever known, working for supportive editors of the paper, and in all that time we struggled day after day to make The Sun a formidable newspaper. We succeeded more often than we failed, and no man has been more fortunate in his colleagues than I have.

But when the curtain falls, you are supposed to get off the stage, and this is my final post at baltimoresun.com. I expect to continue blogging elsewhere, but you will no longer find me at my post here. In addition to colleagues who have been great fun, I have had the good fortune to collect a remarkable corps of loyal readers, and I salute you all with gratitude and affection. You have enriched my life.

 

I've been helped by George and Ray at different times in my career and neither deserved to be let go in this fashion. My best wishes to both.

 

Great username.... are you bill raftery?

 

No, me loves me some Newman.

 

shocking, just shocking ...have worked with both Ray and George....class guys all the way....same can't be said for those who sent the Turk on them

 

You stay classy, Tribune.

And people wonder why circulation is DOWN at newspapers? It's not editorial's fault. It's the fucking bean counters who wouldn't know a good newspaper if it smacked them on their over-large posteriors.

FUCK Zell.

 

I understand that there are guidelines and principles when you're cutting somebody loose, but this whole "leave the building immediately" thing for people who aren't being fired for cause, but just being laid off, just sucks. Take away their job, and then do it in an undignified way to boot.

 

I was a little surprised to see this, because as far as I know, no other Tribune Corporation layoffs had been handled this way. It might have something to do with the fact that the Sun is a Guild paper, although none of those laid off yesterday were Guild.

I've worked with a few of the people laid off yesterday, and Tribune just escorted some talented and hard working people over the catwalk. Good luck to everyone else there.

 

I truly don't understand the process at the paper that was involved in cutting loose hundreds of years worth of experience and institutional knowledge and commitment.

As Michael Corleone asked Hyman Roth, "Who gave the order?" Is it some faceless beancounter in Chicago who sat down with a spreadsheet featuring a list of names, positions and salaries, and conducted a pure cost-benefit analysis, cutting loose those people who had the fattest salaries for their jobs? Was it someone in Baltimore who was charged with slashing $X off the payroll, in anyway possible? And was there someone in the newsroom who had to countenance these decisions and approve?

Because I literally don't know how it would be possible for a decent human being, someone familiar with these individuals and the quality of their work, to undertake this action. I know talk is cheap, but I have to believe I would quit rather than be the person to do this. And then when I think about the departures of Bill Marimow and Tim Franklin, I realize that maybe a couple of other people already have walked my talk.

 

Meanwhile, in Hartford, longtime Courant editor Cliff Teutsch has an insulting new title and a new boss.

http://www.courantalumni.org/2009/04/28/cliff-teutsch-platform-manager/

Here's the memo from the idiot Tribune Co. installed as publisher:

http://www.courantalumni.org/2009/04/28/new-chief-of-content-named/

If the name Graziano is familiar it's because, yes, it's the same guy who was in the middle of the Big Mess in Hartford thread in which he was "helping out" a young female marketing executive in the parking lot of a Farmington driving range early Saturday morning:

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/69269/