Baltimore Sun Columnist: Guess I'll stop mailing it in, now!

Some are curious as to how an editor could run this, and with some of the damning revelations so clearly admitted by the columnist. Perhaps there is something in the way of awkward office politics at work here, and someone decided that getting those details on the record, in print, would lead to a certain inevitability of momentum that would simplify a very muddled, sticky situation.

 

So someone wanted the old-time columnist gone and sneakily suggested he write a column about how the fans love it when he plagiarized his own stuff?

 

Question for any of the longtime SE/ME types here: Is there ANY argument to be made for retaining a columnist under these circumstances?

 

If you had been his editor/supervisor for years and didn't notice that he kept recycling that beloved story of the picnic at the bay with Aunt Tillie and the ants getting into the sausages, you'd want to keep it on the down low.

 

Hmpf. He wrote this very same column three years ago.

 

This poor old guy. Jesus, the column reads like a parody. He's going to actually leave the office now and bravely sally forth into the streets of Baltimore. Oh my God. I felt much less embarrassed for that sweet old lady who trumpeted the charms of the Olive Garden.

 

The sad thing is that people really cherished his retreads.

 

OK, 21, I'll fall on the (albeit little) sword.

There are things you run, and people you keep, because you just ... do.

This point of view drives my boss nuts sometimes. But I defy any manager here to 100 percent state otherwise.

Put another way, I have certainly worked with people over the years who should have been fired because they didn't contribute that much to the overall paper related to their salaries, and I have certainly run stories or standing columns that probably weren't really worth it except to a small handful of readers.

Small example: How many people still read that bridge column you still find in a lot of lifestyle sections? Pretty damn few, I'm guessing. But you just keep running it because you do.

Does anybody find Family Circus remotely funny anymore?

Finally: If they had simply fired this poor schlub, at least some would be in here ripping the cold-hearted newspaper and decrying yet another loss of institutional knowledge.

 

My paper (15K daily) used to have local doctor who wrote an "Ask Dr. Bozo" column, and it ran for years. The guy was about two degrees shy of a quack and his medical "advice" was constantly being challenged by other more reputable docs, but we kept running it because he supposedly had a "loyal following," especially among older readers.

Well, in the course of a redesign a couple of years ago, we proposed moving his column from the Lifestyles section, where it had run forever, to the Community page. He balked at that, and in a snit quit contributing his column. And you know what? We did not get one single complaint. We did get a fair number of responses along the lines of, "it's about time, what took you so long?"

The moral? Sometimes readers are smarter than we think they are, and "because we've always done it this way," is a damn poor reason to keep putting crap in your paper.

 

A-freaking-men.

 

Well, fair enough, but ... let's not ourselves get so smart that we decide that nobody reads something anymore because we think it's outdated and stupid, because maybe they do.

And this print corollary: The people still buying your print product are probably older at this point, and they might care about things people in their 40s or younger maybe don't. So don't be making decisions for your remaining core readership simply based on what YOU think they should want of you're 20 years younger than them.

 

Your entire argument is based on a flawed premise.

It suggests that people EVER found Family Circus funny.