15 Most Stupid Things I've Ever Heard A McPublisher Say

Yeah, fuck CNHI, too.

 

Sounds like a slogan:

"Buy the paper. We may have your daughter's skirt!"

 

Well, I already have trademarked "I may have your daughter's skirt!" for other reasons, though our publisher in question sees nothing wrong with using it.

 

Maybe the guy from the Oklahoman should try working at that paper. He's apparently the kind of innovative, out-of-the-box (insert own joke here -- twice) thinker that paper's looking for.

 

This describes my newspaper right now. The news staff has to take a couple of hundred pictures of everything because the publisher thinks people want to see a full page (or two) of photos from a given event. And he wants a photo page every day.

When I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago, he had the ME run three photos from a softball game that happened a month and a half ago. I guess he had this stringer shoot the photos based on per assignment instead of per photo and he was trying to get a few more pics in so he could justify paying her whatever amount it was.

Meanwhile, we have a stringer we've used for over a decade who's happy to shoot for $20 a photo. I try to use two most of the time but he understands if I have room for only one. And I bet his two photos cost less than whatever the publisher paid this other stringer.

So basically, my ME had to run a bunch of photos to make the publisher feel good about the way he purchases photos, not for any other reason that I can come up with.

 

Iowa Scribe:
I really thought "McPaper McPublisher" was the sole trademark/copyright of Gannett.

 

Don't know about any trademark, but I read the series of articles that coined the phrase "McPaper" about 10 years ago, and most of those articles were about my ex-employers from 'Bama!
Of course, my folks may have stolen the copyright from the Gannett folks -- copyright laws mean nothing to them, just like labor laws.

 

"McPaper" was coined in the mid-’80s to describe USA Today.

 

Yeah, um, no one owns the "McPaper" phrase.

 

Um, folks, the trademark/copyright comment was made tongue in cheek, in jest, ironically; was trying to be sarcastic.

 

OK, I'll be the picky copy editor.

"...who liked to micromanage from 2000 miles away."
"...and started sending all its articles 1000 miles away..."

Those are not figures, those are years. Add the comma. Thanks.

Great read by the way.

 

I once had a publisher explain to me that she goes to Google in order to visit ANY site on the internet.
So, for example, if she wanted to read her Yahoo Mail, instead of typing mail.yahoo.com or even typing www.yahoo.com and clicking the link titled "Mail," she would open a web browser, type www.google.com, type "Yahoo Mail" in the search engine, then go to www.yahoo.com and then click the link titled "Mail.
She did this for EVERYTHING.
Everything on the web.
The whole internet.
True story.