Sad Day in Orlando

Good point. No praise, no raise.

 

Zach was a "home-grown" Sentinel staffer. He started at the high school sports reporting institute and worked as a clerk/part-time guy through college. He stuck with the Sentinel as a freelancer before being hired about 18 months ago.

He's a close friend and it's sad to see him lose what amounted to his dream job. I know he was a grinder on the Magic beat, while also chipping in on golf, college and high school coverage. To put into context his versatility his last two assignments were high school swimming on Friday followed by the FSU-Miami game on Saturday.

I'm sure this was a very tough decision for Tim to make, considering his was Zach's direct supervisor even before he became the SE. However, there were a number of recent hires over the past year so frankly I'm pretty surprised to see Zach get the ax over some other less-proven staffers. He's only 24 and very skilled so I don't have a doubt that he'll land on his feet.

As far as Lynn, I know he's any easy target for many of you guys, but when you get to know him he's a thoughtful guy and a good person to have in your corner. I think his words about Zach reflect that.

 

Meanwhile this is what passes for a blog post now http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_magic/2011/11/what-lockout-magic-add-a-new-role-player.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 

*) Followed by the Dwight Charity game on Sunday...

*) The Sentinel Magic Blog also had a post about Dwight's comment about retiring Hardaway's number. This was weeks after the fact and weeks after there was already a blog on the site on the same subject. I guess folks do not understand the purpose of Blogs is realtime not weeks later.

*) Historic NBA lockout ends, all we get is a blog post (5 hours after it happens) on the same subject of "Dwight is leaving Orlando"...

Apologize for throwing stones but these are just the facts.

 

So is this now going to be a regularly-updated thread where Zach's friends come on and post links and examples of why the Sentinel sucks and things they screw up, and how the Sentinel wouldn't suck and wouldn't have screwed things up if they didn't lay off their buddy?

It sucks that he lost his job, but there are thousands of people in this industry who do great work (dare I say, some even better than legendary Zach?), but lost their jobs for no performance-based reasons. If we're going to have threads on every paper who has laid people off and puts out a worse product because of it, with specific examples, then that's all this journalism board is going to be about. To pretend that the Sentinel is the first or only paper to sacrifice product for the bottom line, just because someone's buddy lost his job, is pretty silly.

I don't know Zach, but if he's as great as his friends on here say, he'll be fine and employed again in no time. And in the end, he'll probably be grateful that he got away from the Sentinel.

 

I feel about Zach as I feel about Tim Tebow. I like his work, but I'm really starting to hate his fans.

When else have we had a "layoff" thread, not a "layoffs" thread? For this to go four pages...

 

I think my favorite is "JustSaying", who obviously has a vested interest in what the Sentinel did pre- and post-Zach, who has a pretty intimate knowledge of all of Zach's job duties and his career path/former employment, who registered here 11 hours after this thread started and has 4 total posts - all ripping the Sentinel and talking about how great Zach is - and yet claims it's unfair when someone jokingly asks if he/she is Zach.

And "JustSaying" insists he just speaking out against an unfair layoff. He's a little late to that party, or I guess the thousands and thousands of good journalists who were laid off before Zach all had it coming?