Jay Mariotti resigns

Joe, it's just that the one-trick pony thing gets tired. We KNOW you're beaten down by newspaper management. A lot of people here are. Reminding everybody of it is not productive; it's irritating.

Hope that was calm and quiet enough.

 

Is that the same with the NYC papes?

 

I've climbed the ladder as far as I ever intend to and I'm low enough on it to still have my feet on the ground.

But I have climbed it high enough to know that the easy demagougery you post here is red meat for nearly all of us who are disaffected by the newspaper industry.

It's easy fodder for "here's, here's" and "fuck the man!" type of support from the board. Hell, I even agree with you much of the time -- soulless fucks who don't care about the industry like Lean Dean and Zell deserve all of the vitriol they get.

But you take it a step further, you paint EVERYONE with that brush. And it's become shill. Very shill.

Not only that, but your red meat very rarely has any flavor to it. It's easy to storm the Winter Palace to say "fuck the man", but what solutions do you have once you get there? Frankly, I rarely see squat in that department amongst the ranting and raving. Your SJ's Kerensky of shaking up the business, and I fear the Lenin that could be behind you as much as I despise the czars that run it now.

Full disclosure so you don't assume I'm some flunky sent down from upstairs, I'm rank-and-file as much as I'm management myself, I'm in the Guild at the same time I have a staff to evaluate. I am currently writing this from a hotel room on assignment for my beat. More so than most, I can see things from all sides.

But this isn't about me so much as its about the broad-brush painting. The other day you said you looked at assistant editor like you would something your dog coughed up. That post is a topic for another thread (by the way, the day I see a reporter gladly expand their duties to do desk work will be the first, and I include MYSELF in that indictment), but it illustrates my point.

Maybe your boss is an ass, I've worked for my share, but I will never, ever judge someone based on their title. For every example of yours, I can cite an example of my own that goes the other way.

To wit, at our shop, we waited too long to fill an open spot and it was frozen. Rather than sit back and burn dollar bills on their collective desks, like you might think, our upper management at my medium-sized shop put their heads together and got creative. They promoted one of our long-time part-timers to full-time, which got around the hiring freeze. He has to split his duties between desk and reporting, but we got it done, plus, showed loyalty to a long-time employee to boot.

My point in all of this is damning with a broad brush is easy, but not terribly helpful to the situation. I've had the kind of bosses you constantly rail at who were clueless, flaming assholes or both, but I've also had bosses I admire and who I know has the best interests of their paper and employees in mind.

Sometimes in reading your posts, I'm not sure you can tell the difference.

 

It is with the Post:

POST, NEW YORK CITY (NEW YORK CO.) AVG M (M-F) DLY 702,488
POST, NEW YORK CITY (NEW YORK CO.) SUN DLY 401,315
POST, NEW YORK CITY (NEW YORK CO.) SAT M DLY 433,956


But they give it away for free on the subway during the week

 

Wonder how much Jay had to pay to buy his way out of the contract. Anyone? Anyone?

 

Mizzou, you also make a good point. They hired Mariotti in the first place and paid him big bucks. They weren't forced to. So I agree with you that the S-T was a little over the top.

 

I know it's piling on and I feel guilty as hell (OK, not really), but here's what a Pulitzer Prize winner had to say ...

http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=13570

 

OK. We'll group you with Roger Ebert.

Your mom must be proud.

 

Personally, I thought it was a good job by Roger.

 

Well, sorry about that. But if either one of them thinks hanging another journalist out to dry in print is good form, I'm glad I'm nowhere near Illinois.

 

You're all of that in one? Wow. Then the place where you work must be very, very small. Or you're the great and mighty Oz. "All sides?" Again ... wow.

Just speaking truth to power, Bubs, speaking truth to power. Power, by the way, that purports to do that outside its own walls but so rarely does it within them.

Waitin' on the ghost of Tom Joad, I suppose. Maybe I can just find out somethin', just scrounge around and find out what it is that's wrong. And then see if somethin' can be done about it.

 

Again, Joe, a lot of rhetoric. Not much meat.