More from Lean Dean

No, that actually IS how a lot of these fuckers operate, in MediaNews, JRC and some other of our more cannibalistic chains. It IS personal. These fucking ghouls get their rocks off on it.

Crushing the employees under a bootheel snuffs any actual pride in their work, any feelings of self-worth, any beliefs that maybe they should be paid more than subsistence wages or thrown more than bare-minimum benefits. It turns the workforce into a pack of cowed, beaten serfs, happy only to escape each day with a job -- until the day they don't.

Which is exactly what the fuckers want. And it's a job they've done well.

 

i've missed you, lapdog. good to have you back.

you might be predictable, but dammit, that's one cute avatar you have.

 

Buck, you're wrong. It IS personal. When the word come down from the highest corporate levels to cut positions, and managers and department heads are encouraged to cut long-term employees who are making more money, are closer to retirement age (and added benefits) or have families that require more benefits, it damn well is personal. I've had too many friends fall victim to that line of BS. And when those companies then turn around and repost those positions as entry-level, well, you do the math.

That's personal. It may be business as usual, too. But it's personal. And it sucks.

 

Years ago:
A few months before my meeting I received all exemplary marks on my performance review.
Then, Dean Singleton and David Butler -- my editor at the time -- made me interview for my own job. My measly pay was decreased 12%.
I remember it feeling pretty fucking personal.

 

Does Dean make upper management go through the same crap?

 

Is it personal?
A friend of mine worked for a paper that Singleton bought. The pay level was already low enough that he didn't need to do the interview-for-your-own-job routine.
Then the guy got a job at a different non-Singleton paper. A few months later, Singleton acquired that paper and started the "interview" process. The first thing the management person said to my friend was, "You can run, but you can't hide."

 

Does Singleton have any friends? Any men or women who actually admire the guy for his values, his treatment of his fellow human beings, his record of making the world a better rather than a worse place?

Or does he just consort with other rat-bastards in the gutter of greed? I'm starting to think that corporate America has concocted a plot to choke off legitimate journalism as a way of granting themselves licenses to steal. Killing the watchdogs, y'know?

I'd like to think that Singleton, at the end of his "work" day, just hides behind the gates of his estate, alone, the lights dim, the furnace turned way down and a bowl of gruel on his lap.

 

William Dean Singleton, chairman, The Associated Press.

Scary, no?

 

Difference is Ebenezer Scrooge changed.

 

Scrooge was soft.

 

This is an amazing thread. Wow.

 

I don't know if I'd call it a conspiracy, but I know Wall Street and Fortune 500 execs aren't shedding any tears that newspapers are shedding journalists. Sure we can latch on to a web job or a smaller operation, but there is a unique power of a physical thing like a newspaper headline above the fold saying Corp. X Coverup ok'd by CEO that I don't think the Internet will ever generate.