What a complete news hole this guy is.
Posted on 12/14/2006 12:06:14 PM PST by freedomdefender
As Washington Post reporters gird themselves for today’s 3 pm meeting with executive editor Leonard Downie, they use four words to describe the mood of the newsroom:
Anxious. Depressed. Restless. Angry.
And for good reasons.
A month ago Downie issued a memo saying the Post would have to “shrink the newsroom staff” and “renovate sections” and tighten the news hole. Translation: fewer reporters writing shorter stories at different assignments. Then earlier this week New York Times media writer David Carr, in a column about Washington Post Company head Don Graham, said, “Newsroom layoffs of an unspecified number are in the offing.”
Hours after the Carr piece hit the streets, Downie spit out a memo calling the report “flat wrong” and adding that he would “quash any stupid, false rumors like this one.”
But on the newsroom floor, there’s the feeling, if not the effect, of layoffs and dislocations.
Style writers have been shifted to Metro under a plan that seems to be gutting the features staff. Veteran political editor Maralee Schwartz has fled to financial. The continuous news desk, which shuffles stories between the newspaper and the Post web site, was disbanded. Will Sunday Style combine with Sunday Arts?
Then there’s the case of Linda Hales—her treatment blurs the line between buyout and layoff.
Hales came to the Post from the International Herald Tribune in 1988. She edited the Home section for a decade. She won the Penny-Missouri Journalism Award in 1991 for general excellence in editing.
In late 1999 she started writing a weekly Style section design column. Her essays ranged from chair design to makeovers of congressional offices to her take on Italian silverware.
When the Post announced its most recent “voluntary” buyout offers, Hales says she told editors she wasn’t ready to retire. Editors told her it would be best if she took the deal.
The word from Downie, according to Hales, was: “I see you on the copy desk.”
Hales, 57, considered her 700-plus bylines and her belief that a design column has a place in a “great newspaper,” and she fought for her job. At last report she had been assigned to the copy desk for Metro tabloid sections. Hales was not laid off, technically, but she certainly was shunned at best and at worst treated shabbily.
Downie was not available for comment.
To be sure, excitement and energy abounded all week at the top echelons of the Post’s national and political desks, as well as in financial, where Sandra Suguwara has taken charge.
Susan Glasser was assuming control of the national report in place of Liz Spayd, who became editor of washingtonpost.com. Bill Hamilton joined Glasser in remaking the political team, torn up by top writers defecting to other news operations. They hired John Solomon from the Associated Press.
But very few reporters or editors were awaiting Len Downie’s staff meeting with hopes of good news. He has become the agent of lowered expectations.
ping
vulture alert
Get rid of the leftist Democrats on the staff. Circulation will go up.
What's bad for the Washington Compost is really, really good for America.
Angry?? "What we do is too important to be subjected to the profit motive! We give people the facts...er...our version of the facts and its important dammit! Why should I have to go out and find a real job after being a part of this liberal cabal cocoon! I woke up every day of my life agreeing to tell the big lies, insulting our customers, bathe them in anti-Americanism, multiculturalism and queerism, and this is what I get??? Boy Im gonna sue someone for this!!"
This happens with any organization whose PRODUCTS ARE DEFECTIVE AND CAN NO LONGER BE TRUSTED.
Newspaper man and women? Huh... More like cheerleaders with their own agendas...And when that happens many people stop using the product. So actions have consequences and it's time to pay up. So sorry :)
I won't comment... I WON'T COMMENT!....
Frankly, I don't care if they all get layed off. They are all a bunch of liberal swine and the decline in readership is directly due to their left wing stance on most every issue.Now most of them will have to get real jobs.
I understand there's a lot of this going around the MSM lately. If they didn't talk outta their ass most of the time, this may not have been such a problem.
Much as I'd like to believe it's the liberal spin that's caused the demise of the daily rag, I don't think that's the answer. I know lots of people, both D and R, who have quit taking the daily, and cut back to weekends only, or not at all.
It's a bother to toss out the paper, and the information is available quicker and easier through 24 hour TV news, or the internet.
The liberal politics of the papers is a small, yet very enjoyable, contributing factor.
"You're all fired, you commie RATS!"
What a complete news hole this guy is.
verbage like "news hole" must be the new elitist term. it means nothing, but has connotations that make preadolescents snicker.
this guy must be highly educated and competent, doncha know?
Aw... come on - you KNOW you want to...
a man talk like that, he's likely to be some sort of 'hole' hisself.
The elite mediot maggot owners of ABCNNBCBS, the Compost and owners/publishers of the other major dinosaur fishwraps are the modern day, Norman Bates. They are trying to keep the corpses alive by refusing to admit that they are dead and to bury them.
Buy my Dinosaur Fishwrap stock. The old gray lady is just fine!
There's a decent sized portion of my mind that never made it past preadolescence. That's the part that keeps me happy.
I hope the paper shrivels up and the twisted pieces blow into the muddy bottom of the Potomac, never to be seen again.
The heady days of Woodward and Bernstein are long gone and the days of vinegar and metamucil lie ahead for the arrogant leftist fools at the Post.
I hope this once proud newspaper gets bought out by the Rev. Moon.
That'll learn 'em.
Leni
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