Herald to cut about 175 positions

Your welcome.

And it is Mr. Dick to you.

 

No, I get it. And it's a fair point. Those of us who have some inside knowledge can put two and two together pretty easily, though.

 

I feel so bad for everyone in this situation.

I hope we would all react with some sort of deceny and whatnot but you never know -- people are mortgaged and credit carded to the hilt, most of us are one missed paycheck from disaster and financial stress and pressure is causing us all to have health issues and family problems and everything else -- we are all wired so tight and that is why some people are probably reacting in ways that, well, frankly are out of character.

 

Still, to reach the point to extort money out of a fellow journalist ... that's beyond the pale. Can you imagine depositing a personal check that a coworker wrote you in order to save their job? Desperation doesn't account for that.

 

look, i'm the last guy to set the rule for board etiquette, but zagoshe has a point. i mean, mike phillips' ethics -- a journalist's only stock in trade -- have been called seriously into question. i stated my feelings about mike above -- in fact, the statement is what seemed to have pushed bullet to tell his story -- but i have no idea who bullet is, and he has just called mike out in the most serious way. mike is now the only one dangling, and he might well have a different version. bullet: i sense you're telling your version of the truth here, and you may be happy and -- board-wise, anyway -- right to tell me to fuck off. but i'm stuck in ambigu-land until i know who you are.

 

AD, I disagree with you. I would have no right, board-wise or anything else, to tell you to fuck off. You asked a valid question. There was a time when the industry we worked in encouraged such a thing.

My handle and the details of the story make my identity known to many of the people who follow this thread.

Understand, I have no beef with the paper itself. Before the names were identified for the latest round of cuts, I sent the big guy in sports a message wishing him well with the upcoming layoffs and the situation as a whole. I grew up a fan of the Herald. My mornings typically began with the sports section in hand. Despite all the uncertainty and the state of the industry, I'd like to see the Herald somehow reverse its fate and rebound.

There is a sizable back story to this whole situation. For the sake of brevity, my character was pretty much assassinated upon my departure. Per a confidentiality agreement, I cannot and will not go into much detail about the layoff. But, what happened afterward was despicable. I was accused of poisoning and drying up sources. I was accused of theft (which I consulted an attorney about). Nearly five months after the fact, I got a call from an old colleague and someone I viewed as a mentor. He called to ask me about the allegations and found them comical.

To sum it up: I was left in limbo for 10 days, was the victim of what I call an extortion attempt, had my character and name dragged through the mud and can now count on one hand the number of people I talk to after 11+ years of employment at the place. Despite all that, you have not seen me bash the paper itself. Quite the opposite, actually.

The funny thing is Mike may have thought he was doing me a favor. Maybe he thought, since I am substantially younger than him, that I could save my career with what he suggested. I do not think he, or anyone else, realized the downward slope of the industry would be quite so severe. I don't know the intent, as I was obviously too upset at the time to discuss or consider it further. It just struck me as a low blow considering what I was going through to even suggest it. He may have a completely different take.

Again, the intent may be up for debate, but the facts are presented accurately.

 

No one KNOWS anyone based on some glancing work experience.

 

Seems to me that there are enough details provided and searchable -- who got laid off and when, what beat Mike Phillips would have been seeking names and numbers of sources for, from the laid-off reporter he allegedly extorted -- to verify or dismiss this. And I think "the bullet" surely knows that, so he wouldn't fabricate out of whole cloth, given how easy it would be to ID him, if someone really cared enough.

Can't say I like the quick and easy manner people these days lapse into assuming that we're only getting someon's "version of the truth." We're all too relative in these trying times and frankly, I think there is one version of the truth in more cases than a lot of folks realize or admit. Here, either someone offered to take a buyout in return for a large personal check from a colleague who was on the chopping block, or he didn't.

Seems to me we've been lapsing rather quickly on this board into "Hey, it's dog eat dog out there" self-preservation. If this is the apocalypse that triggers our worst instincts, how are we going to behave when things get worse, much worse? When food or water or air is involved regarding surviving another day or week, when class warfare isn't just verbal and so on? I'm not normally a doomsday person, but I sure don't think we're at the point where nobility and class and doing the right thing for someone else and doing the right thing to stay who we are in our heads and our hearts all are quaint and discarded notions.

Seems to me, too, that buyout/layoff systems like the Herald put into play turns our profession into a real-life version of "Saw."

 

Anyone in the SoFla market knows who "the bullet" is. Not really anonymous. Though, I suppose, it could be someone merely posing as "the bullet"

 

Oh really? I thought the ability to blog, shoot video, file a gamer and notes, sub for the Web site, "tweet" even from your proctologist's office, do live chats, take photos, drive to all events no matter how many states away and work 12-hour days for eight hours of pay, while fetching coffee for the boss and cleaning out the disgusting newsroom fridge were the reasons folks retain their jobs.

 

I don't like anonymous bashing, either. But the bullet is telling a specific story and giving details so it's not like he is making vague allegations or anything.

 

hey joe: this has nothing to do with squishy relativism. no matter the details, until we hear from mike this is bullet's "version of the truth". usually, we get both sides of a he-said/he/she-said and then try to figure out what happened. so far, we've only got one side. that ain't "truth" to me. not yet.