Interesting situation in Detroit - UPDATED

Re: Interesting situation in Detroit

Plus as someone pointed out earlier, biggest difference between last year and this year is this: Albom's came when the Freep was owned by Knight-Ridder, who leaves discretion to its managers. Farrell's came when the Freep is owned by Gannett, which has a zero-tolerance policy as far as that. Just ask Barry Stanton, who was canned at the Journal News in 2003.

 

Re: Interesting situation in Detroit

If this guy was doing his job right, this wouldn't have happend. Something stinks here and it's likely his shit.

 

Re: Interesting situation in Detroit

Not to mention that Gannett, with its endlessly self-touted "commitment to diversity," isn't going to can a veteran A-A writer, unless they have pretty solid evidence.

Hell, Gannett owned the Detroit News for years, and continued to employ Rob Parker even after some pretty suspicious plagiarism incidents (although he has cleaned up his act somewhat in those regards in the last couple of years), so you'd have to guess whatever's involved in the Farrell situation has to be pretty clear-cut.

 

Re: Interesting situation in Detroit

i wonder if ferrel has enough contacts to get another big newspaper job elsewhere or if his roots are too deep in detroit to want to move.

 

But boots' pipeline is so much better. Just ask him.

 

An actual story.

Fired Sportswriter Wins Case Against Detroit Paper
An arbitrator has ruled in favor of sportswriter Perry Farrell, who was dismissed from the Detroit Free Press last year after an incident in which, he said, "I should have paraphrased instead of quoting."

Farrell should have been disciplined, but not fired, arbitrator Anne T. Patton said in a ruling dated Friday. He was ordered reinstated with full back pay except for 90 days, when Patton said a suspension was justified, according to Lou Mleczko, president of the Newspaper Guild of Detroit, which took Farrell's case to arbitration after grievance machinery failed.

"The allegation of gross misconduct was not proven by the paper," the arbitrator said.

She compared Farrell's case with others at the paper, though the story in question was never published. "Other employees were not discharged, although one was charged with the more egregious, deliberate and intentional offense of plagiarism. The fact that other employees had no prior offenses on their record does not justify the difference between the three-day suspension they received and the discharge Farrell received."

Patton did not specify which other employees she was talking about, and Mleczko said he knew only that the one charged with plagiarism was not a Guild member.

The Farrell incident came just over a year after the paper rode out an uproar involving star columnist Mitch Albom, who described activity at a game that had not yet taken place.

The Free Press, then owned by Knight Ridder, took unspecified disciplinary action against Albom and four other staffers, each of whom had some role in putting his 2005 column into the paper "and each of whom had the responsibility to fix errors before publication," the Free Press said then in a letter to readers.

The arbitrator's decision came "10 months to the day" of his firing, Farrell told Journal-isms. It was "one of the worst experiences of my life." The Gannett paper "thought they had me out the door," but "God's protected me through this situation."

Farrell, 49, and a father of three, said "because of the Lord, I have not missed a car note or a house note" and that "I've done some things to start a new career in the financial services field." Although he plans to return to the paper, "I've learned to keep the door open just in case."

He was bitter toward some of his colleagues who worked with him for 17 or 18 years, and "never gave me a phone call. A lot of people turned their back on me," he said.

Kristi Bowden, vice president for human resources for the Detroit Media Partnership, which operates the Free Press and the Detroit News under a joint operating agreement, said she would have no comment. "We're not in a position to discuss a personnel/legal issue," she told Journal-isms.

The Free Press' attorney, John Jaske, said he was away from the area and had not seen the decision.

In the incident in which "they tried to build a case against me," Farrell said he had taken some quotes from a Web site from two sources whom he had spoken with and whose comments he had on tape. "I should have paraphrased instead of quoted" the Web comments, he said. "It's hardly something" that should have had such an effect on an 18-year career, Farrell told Journal- isms last year.

The sportswriter said he saw other forces at work. "I was put in a situation at the Free Press where it was obvious they didn't want me around. In their struggle to get breaking news in the paper, they didn't want someone of my experience to do that."

Farrell said he had three beats in nine months, going from covering the NBA's Detroit Pistons to reporting on colleges and then on high school sports in western Wayne County, Mich. He said, "If I was a white guy with this experience level, I'd be a columnist for a major paper."

Mleczko said the experience demonstrated the importance of unions. "Most journalists work at papers where there is no union," he said. "They don't have to give you a reason for letting you go. Where there is a union, we have contract language" saying one can be fired only for just and sufficient cause. "We challenged it on that basis."

 

I thought Cesar Andrews, as the executive editor, was No. 1. The EE is usually No. 1, no?

 

The top editor is Paul Anger. He hired the EE as his No. 2.

On some papers the EE is No. 1, on some it is No. 2. I worked on one paper that had two EEs reporting to the Editor.

 

Conveniently ignored in all this is Farrell's first brush with greatness, some 10 or so years ago, when he tried to pawn off AP's preseason NBA caps as his own, then saying he sent the wrong file...

 

I've always considered the Hooterville County Bugle as a much superior product over the Detriot Free Press.