Layoffs at AL.com

They had reassigned him to a pets and animal rights beat. What a great way to utilize a Pulitzer Prize winner.

 

Now, see, the way I read it was that animal rights was his normal beat and he was getting "too involved" so they fired him, not that he was indignant after being moved to that beat

 

I saw the FB post by his wife referred to in one of those articles. I think Kennedy liked and enjoyed working that beat. I also think that he was being utterly wasted on it, and it would not surprise me a bit if they stuck him there in hopes that he'd get fed up and resign so they wouldn't have to fire him. There's been a wave of getting rid of the good staff and replacing them with either someone cheap just out of school or with no one at all.

 

Well, they're not short on nerve. A couple of weeks after sacking Kennedy, Al.com has reprinted the the first of the columns on the Alabama tax system that he and two others won the Pulitzer for. It's being run as a companion piece to another column on how screwed up the state tax code is and the current huge deficit.

It's hard to believe.

What they won't tell you: AL.com revisits 1991 Pulitzer Prize winning series on taxes | AL.com

 

At least that move is getting blasted in the reader comments.

 

That "wave" has been going on a good 10 years now.

 

Randy Kennedy has been hired as program director of the Mobile sports radio station:

Mobile sports station WNSP hires Randy Kennedy as program director | AL.com

 

I heard longtime writer Tommy Hicks was laid off recently. Any truth to this? Really good guy from what I remember.

 

I can confirm his layoff. He, Kennedy and Solomon Crenshaw were unceremoniously dismissed.

 

Budget cuts the reasoning behind it I presume?

 

This might be a dumb question ...
It's becoming pretty well established what a large portion of the newspaper/media business model is these days. "Reorganize" by sacking half the current staff; replace them with young and cheap hires or not at all; do what you can to push out older, more expensive employees; and in 2-3 years repeat the cycle when the cost of retaining people is more expensive than hiring new ones.
This has been Gannett's model for a while now, but it seems to be spreading (as most awful things in journalism do) to other companies.

Given that, is there anything the rank and file can do from a legal standpoint? Lawsuits, NLRB complaints, anything of that nature? If nothing else, something that could throw the fear of God into a few of these companies and make them rethink things? Or are we just plodding along, hoping our number doesn't get called, until someone wakes up and realizes that younger and cheaper doesn't typically mean better?
I suppose it's their company, you don't have to work there, yada, yada, etc., but this is happening at way too many places for it not to be systemic at some level. It's more than just being in a dying industry.

 

Don't they usually try to can one or two younger people so they can claim they weren't discriminating?