An unjust dismissal

But the story says that she had always shared her editorials with her staff, and I had read it to mean that she sent it to both the publisher and her staff at the same time, before she or the staff knew it would be spiked. Doesn't sound like insubordination, unless the publisher specifically had told her not to share editorials with the staff before.

 

Tens of thousands of people, including Pulitzer Prize winners, deserved to be dumped?

 

Misery loves company, Baron.

 

I didn't take it that she sent them to the staff and publisher at the same time, although I did get that she had sent editorials to her staff in the past. It sounded like she sent it to the publisher, it got killed, and she sent it on to the staff to see what they thought. I also get this weird vibe that she tried to rally the staff against the publisher. The only way to know the truth is to be in the middle of it I suppose. But, I agree, it's not insubordination if she was following the same protocol that she always had previously.

 

Fired because of pressure from an advertiser.
No, I have no idea what that's like.

 

Oh, please. Insubordination for what? Asking the publisher to change her mind and getting people to rally around that cause?

Managers and GMs should get fired on a weekly basis then, I guess.

The person doesn't know how to be a publisher, is more like it.

 

No. Insubordination for attempting to undermine the publisher by getting all of the staff to write a letter of support for the column and not accepting the decision of the publisher. Nobody can be sure what exactly happened here. But there are two sides to every story and I doubt the columnist is as innocent as she claims. You may not like that she got shown the door, but try crossing your publisher and see what happens.

And don't fucking talk down to me like I'm some greenass newbie. I've been doing this for 24 years. I've had pieces killed myself. I know all about this shit. And the bottom line is, when it happens to you, there ain't shit you can do about it. You sure as fuck don't go whine to your coworkers and and you sure as hell don't try to circumvent your superiors.

It sucks when someone refuses to accept your opinion and publish it. It's a moment when you realize the words "Free Speech" are pretty much bullshit in this business. But the bottom line is it's a fucking business. And if you want to work in this business, you have to learn to bite your tongue, move on, and coexist with people who are in charge and have opinions that don't agree with you or your coworkers.

If not, you can live in your little idealist fantasy world on fucking food stamps and unemployment because you won't be working for anyone long.

 

Damn, that's a version of the same speech I used to make all the time.

And I guess at one point, I said fuck people doing wrong stuff.

 

I didn't write down to you. You did to me, though, presuming I live in some fantasy world when it comes to the business side of it. I don't. When you write the words "circumvent your superiors," the only thing that would fit that definition would be printing the editorial anyway. Maybe that's what was going to happen, and if so, well, then you'd have to fire that person. But that's not the story thus far and I don't expect that to be the story.

I'm writing - because I believe it - that this publisher comes off looking like an amateur firing her editor over a few days of anger. Journalists - including some of the very best - are often petulant and difficult. But long-time editors are also a pain in the ass to replace, and doing it over a spiked NRA editorial is dumb. It creates a chilling effect in the work. We can argue whether people should "buck up" and "deal with it" but I've seen it, and that's what it does. It butchers the product.

 

Am I the only person here who has worked for newspaper publishers who actively encouraged dissent and the free yet sometimes contentious exchange of ideas? You know, things journalism was built on? "Insubordination" can and should be a very valuable tool for a journalist.

I've told this story before, but I once saved my former paper a lot of headaches by spiking a piece written by my ME when I was news editor. We argued and argued until finally, I just spiked it after he left for the day. The next morning, the shit hit the fan but the publisher had MY back because she knew, from a journalistic standpoint, that I was right and that was more important than hurt feelings.

 

We all know you were hot shit back in the day. Even Drip and MizzouGrad showrd more humility.

 

I just want to know when this Golden Age of journalism began and ended. It must have been very brief, because the history of newspapers is the history of rich families using them to advance their own ideas, agendas, and politics.

And, it's only been the last decade or so that the families that founded papers like the Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, and Wall St. Journal began to sell their properties. (The NY Times is still family held.)

If we looked at smaller cities and towns, we would see the same thing.