Laid-off Gannett sports editor raps company in final column

Does this mean my travel U11 3-on-3 soccer team's photo won't be in the paper this week?

 

The only problem I have with a column like this or others like it - is that it should have been written 10 years ago. How many others have been axed and yet it is only a problem when the writer is directly affected and has nothing to lose? It doesn't make what he wrote wrong, but it's like talking about what a drag your ex-girlfriend is/was after she dumped you.

 

They were national champions! Of course their photo is getting in.

 

He does try to not torch his immediate bosses with this paragraph, so maybe he wasn't quite burning the bridge, except with the corporate jackasses who don't give a damn about him anyways:

"Please don't take this as knock against the Daily Record's bosses. They're great people who truly care about the community and this newspaper. Corporate greed everywhere has run amok, and we the people are left to deal with the consequences of its wake."

What others have pointed out though, is that it did read as somewhat self serving. Here's what I would have written, if I was writing a torch the newspaper corporation column:

"Now, you, as the reader, may wonder why you should care. Here's why. In the past, this column ripping the corporation would have never made it into print. There would have been people, good hard-working people who don't get their names in bylines, who would have caught this column before it made it to your doorstep, and contacted the appropriate editors, who would have, as you see in the movies, stopped the presses, and put in an appropriate substitute column while drawing up plans to fire me.

All those people are now gone, to the unemployment line."

Personally, after reading the column, and all his health issues, I say, good for him. Yeah, he might regret it down the road if he can't find a job, but reading about what he had to go through, life's too short.

Too me, there's not enough of this conversation going on in this country. There was a week or so of that crackpot flight attendant, but there are so many other stories out there of people who are workng hard and getting shafted at the end. And with apologies for making this political, that is Real America.

 

At one stop, I wrote to the publisher and ripped every editor on staff. It didn't work out too well.

I've also left relatively quietly, like Corky, after getting screwed over by a couple people in management, and I still keep in touch with some folk. I know that wouldn't be the case had I ratcheted up the BS.

YMMV, of course.

 

As of right now, this guy is out of the business, unless he wants to freelance.

The layoff will do far more to end/ruin his career than this column ever will.

The man probably realizes that, too, and that's why he wrote what he did. I agree with others who say he was simply being real. He put his heart into the column, just as he did with his work.

There's nothing wrong with that, and in my book, it makes him more employable, not less so.

 

I've heard that DiLeo received more than 100 emails -- and three job offers -- by the time he got to the paper's farewell party last night.

 

I guess it pays to be a self-serving dick in a public forum.

 

I've done that before too, but believe me it was a place I was happy to see disappear out the rear view mirror of the U-Haul when I moved on. The stop before that, I'd been in various positions in that company for quite a while, but when the layoff came, I was doing a general interest column, but decided to bypass a farewell, since I wasn't on the best terms with the ME at the time, plus was ready to move on to the next adventure in journalism.

 

The more I think of it, I'm agreed with Write that it should make DiLeo more employable. Not saying it will, but it should. A commenter on the link said something that echoes that thought and rung true.

"Speaking truth to power should make a journalist more employable, not less."

I've always thought the best media outlets would realize that. Granted they have to be extremely rare, but if there are a few still out there, they will understand the subtext of this column along with the valid points it makes despite some that were lost in the heat of an exceptionally painful moment.

We should be able to criticize ourselves -- and our bosses. Didn't we used to admire those front-page stories of editors who got into trouble -- because it showed we would not be hypocritical and would turn our journalistic teeth on ourselves if necessary? Sure, there are battles to pick and emotions to check, but journalism isn't supposed to be like other businesses where you should just mind authority at all times.

I could be wrong, but I believe there was a time when newspapers actually were willing to take criticism as well as give it. The fact that a corporate culture has changed the willingness to take it can be acknowledged as increasing the risks of being critical.

But it shouldn't make it wrong.

 

Self-serving?
Tell that to the folks who apparently applauded him at the farewell party. Who also had lost their jobs, possibly their careers. Who, like too much of the country, have no damn idea how they're going to make rent, mortgage or feed their kids.
Tell it to all the readers who were touched or inspired, or related to what he wrote based on their own struggles.

Reading this column as self-serving is extremely lazy and short-sighted. It was quite the opposite of self-serving, because it quite easily could have cost the writer plenty, but he wrote it anyway. If you really read the whole thing and don't just get turned off by the parts that solely apply to DiLeo (which, by the way, are about a myriad of health problems he worked through; what a track record of selfish behavior), he's writing about more than himself.

 

oscaroscaroscar, I'm sorry, but those paragraphs aren't about "speaking truth." I have no problem with his decisions -- as his own, certainly not mine -- other than to wonder why 3/4 of the column is spent talking about how great he is and why his firing was unfair.

The thing that gets me about this is that it's really not even a strong criticism of Gannett. It's an emotional rant, the type of thing I've seen done by bad columnists after a team loses. Instead of addressing problems, he simply rips everything down and doesn't attempt to say "This is how it could be done better," or, "These are the future ramifications."

And that, above all else, is why I would never hire him. It's just piss-poor whining. A well written deconstruction of Gannett would have been far more effective -- and actually had a chance to make management even bat an eye.