gannett plans to layoff 3,000 by december.

seconded

 

One of the nicest guys I've met in this business, and as Jim said, incredibly talented. Few rival his ability to tell a story.

 

for that piece of shit, any time is right.

i would do a mexican hat dance around his fucking corpse if i could -- and when i finished, i'd take a shit on it

he's had no problem firing people for personal reasons, so i don't see why i should be respectful of his canning. he did offer me the same courtesy.

i feel for so many people today -- but i feel joy for that bit of karma.

 

dude, then feel bad for his family, that he can't support. For his wife. For his kids.
I know Brad wouldn't want anyone's pity, but right now, try a little bit of grace. This is not the time to shit on another man's grave.

 

it would take quite a bit of grace to do a hat dance and shit at the same time, actually. and i'll be happy to show him.

 

I don't know. I once worked for Gannett and I'm scanning the layoff list for a name that I would be very happy to see.
Nothing wrong with it either.
Anyone who has had a bad Gannett experience will probably have similar feelings.
I don't know the particulars with Hoops deal, even though I have a strong suspicion and if that is what he feels, that is what he feels.

 

Having been fired unjustly in the past and having watched the man who pulled the trigger and the man who ordered him to pull the trigger both lose their jobs (even if one rebounded to the NY Times), I sympathize with Hoops here.

Karma is a bitch. And she's got game.

Meanwhile, someone I do feel for is John Davis, a pro's pro of a golf writer who had his beat sawed off from underneath him over the last year. And another golf-crazy market will go without proper golf coverage from the state's biggest metro.

 

Agreed on both counts. The notion that a golf writer is expendable in Phoenix is absurd. It sometimes seems like they're consciously trying to drive readers away.

And I can think of a former supervisor who could be hit by a train tonight and I'd throw a party. The world would be a better place. One of the best moments of my career was finding out he'd been fired.

 

Maybe this should be its own thread, but what the hey:

Which would you prefer, getting laid off because your paper no longer wanted to dedicate a staff spot to your role (i.e., a full-time golf writer), or have someone else get laid off while you get reassigned into doing that person's job?

I think it stinks that, just because someone fills a certain role that his editors wanted and maybe even assigned him to -- and then does it well, to the point of really enjoying it -- that spells the staffer's doom. If a paper wants to get rid of its golf-writing position, it doesn't have to kick to the curb the person covering golf. Kick somebody who's a poor performer to the curb (if you must, that is) and give a good performer the opportunity to stay on in another capacity.

Now if the staffer says, screw that, I'm a golf writer -- or a NASCAR writer or an NFL writer or whatever -- then probably they'll be happier moving on rather than being dead-ended into something for which they have no passion. But give them a choice. This always reminds me of the Florida guy who got axed just because he was covering the faraway team.

 

Joe: I've certainly wondered the same thing. All these good people going, and you'd think there has to be somebody less talented working at the same place, where they could fire on merit (or lack thereof) and then move the good person into that job. But you rarely see where that was done. It's the role being deleted, and if it's a good person in that role, that's tough.

I suppose perhaps the corollary would be that the good people are higher paid, which makes them easier targets, but the whole thing still seems backward.

 

As someone who was laid off despite extraordinary reviews while others who weren't nearly as good survived, I also wondered the same thing. But I'm seeing this trend repeat itself over and over in newsrooms around America, and the only conclusion I can come to is this: newspaper managers are like sheep. Many are not deep thinkers. This is the way layoffs are done. Rather than say, hey, I've got to let this many people go, how can I keep my best people and maybe give this newspaper a chance...let's see, I'll ask to see if they're willing to take on a different role? No. It's easier to say, we can do without this beat and this column and whoever the poor sucker filling that role, no matter how talented and valuable he or she is to the newspaper, we're gonna whack them.

 

or because people in those roles make the most money ... i think people are smarter than you're assuming.