Column in Thursday's Birmingham News

www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/jarchibald.ssf?/base/news/12441033109910.xml&coll=2

I like this.

 

It's nice to say all those things, but he doesn't really know for sure any more than the rest of us.

Gotta admire the attitude, though...

 

I don't like the butt kissing to his company in the column. Like "we'll get by," with the pay cuts. Speak for yourself, buddy. Some in your company now can't pay the rent. What is your company going to do when they are on the street or need a second job? That's right. The higher-ups will not help these people.
I thought the column reeked of him being a company shill a bit.

 

Is it possible to "reek" "just a bit?"

Isn't that like being sort of pregnant?

 

No kidding. And if one more journalist says they didn't get into the business for the money, I'm going to plunk them with a Sunday newspaper (though it won't hurt as bad as one might from 10 years ago). Sure, maybe you don't make as much money as other professions, but you got into the business to make money. If you're in journalism for something else, then join the Peace Corps.

 

Garbage. I didn't get in the business to make millions, but I also didn't get in the business to run a chance at getting my house foreclosed. People who say they didn't get into the business for the money are the people who aren't making 20K. I tell ya what, trade salaries with someone who got in just as papers started freezing and cutting salaries, then write a column about the money.

 

I wonder why he took the butt kissing route with the column?

 

So, readership has stayed the same, but everyone has to take a pay cut?

Yeah, yeah, advertising and revenue is down. Still, they were making money for the last few years. Why didn't they save any of it?

Enough of the rallying of the troops rah, rah shit. Get out, cover the damn news and figure out a way to make money on the Internet.

 

Like the fact he was trying to show bravado in the face of trying times, even though some of it was a little unrealistic as something that just needs to be accepted.

Beyond that, you learn something every day. I was going to take him to task for blowing the Twain line, which I always thought was, "The reports of my death were greatly exaggerated." Humorously, I was going to note that he could have found the correct line on the Web.

Turns out he did have the correct line, and the other was a misrecollection perpetuated by Twain himself. Twain's original quote was pretty much as noted. Which, thank goodness, I found on the web.

 

This is becoming a game of Mad Libs.

Money is tight, so we're going to fuck the people that make the product. Don't worry. "We" are a bunch of troopers who will get through this (assuming there are no layoffs). "We" didn't get in this for money. We're losing revenue but still growing readership. We're No. 1 in local news. We're blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Insert cliche about the Mark Twain quote to offset all those naysayers. Blah blah blah blah blah. End with the cliche about comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable (really, it's the opposite when it comes to our own people).

Same old shit I read last week.

 

Ya know, you're right. The whole "we're troopers," while admirable on some levels (along with the "we love this business" lines) just give the corporate types who have no sense of this whatsoever another reason to screw newspaper people with little guilt -- not that they would have any anyway.

"Hey, they're troopers! They won't mind!"

 

Nobody got in this business to make money. But most of us who stayed in it were only able to stay in it because we found ways to make more money while doing it.