Next in Line ... Milwaukee

As posted on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Website:

 

This is a place that just had a round of buyouts less than six months ago...

 

Jim Romenesko has the memo. Hell, he has every memo these days.

http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=13453

 

Ya know, that's just awesome. A buddy of mine found out about this memo on SportsJournalists.com, AND HE WORKS AT THE JS!
Dickheads.
Sure, it's a newspaper that provides the news. But how about informing your employees before sending out a memo to the general public.

 

It's possible they sent out the memo to managers and one forwarded it to Romenesko before they sent it to everyone.

Regardless, this royally sucks. The paper may have the best NFL coverage in the country.

 

My guess is he was supposed to get the memo when he next showed up for work.

 

I have edited the memo down to highlight my favorite parts!

-- First, there's the classic rationale of "Everyone else is doing it, so we should do it, too." Don't tell me that this doesn't make it easier for the suits and bean-counters. Might even intrigue them.

-- Something about the wording of this -- ``All full-time employees are eligible'' -- makes it sound like it's an enhancement to the health benefits or the 401K plan, rather than THE END OF YOUR CAREER AT THE MILWAUKEE NEWSPAPER AND MAYBE IN JOURNALISM FOREVER! "Oh, gee, guess what, I'm eligible to walk into that gas chamber. Lucky me!"

-- The message isn't nearly as painful and difficult as that first month of bills after the buyout money runs out. And while the journos' work allegedly never has been better, can the ad salespeople, the newsroom leadership and the suits and bean-counters make the same claim? Someone in the newsroom at least won a Pulitzer this year. What grand vision or salvation plan, other than amputating healthy limbs and removing vital organs from the news operation, have the bosses cooked up lately?

Scumbags.

 

Don't blame us, everybody is doing it...

 

Does anyone else find this reasoning and these two consecutive paragraphs ridiculously contradictory and incongruous?

How "successful" can it have been if business is bad they have to have the paper's second round of buyouts in six months?

 

Anybody who reads one of these memos and expects them to make sense will likely have their head explode.