Le Batard taking year off from paper

I'm hoping Jay Mariotti is the next "media star" to burn out.

I'm envious that a columnist can turn his big salary into two or three more big salaries at the same time, but it does hurt the newspaper. Columnist writes fewer columns, and many of them are what we've already heard or watched on radio or TV. Paper doesn't cut the columnist's big salary -- "Hey, he's branding us on ESPN ;D -- but the local readers wonder why there's fewer and fewer columns.

I'd suck up those two or three salaries in a minute, of course. But if I was the sports editor at the paper, I'd run the guy out when he put his radio or TV gig before the job he was hired to do at the paper. The paper usually would expect him to report his stuff there first. If not, sayonara.

 

So, we're simply supposed to tolerate sustained borderline-criminal behavior from selected Miami athletes, and if we don't choose to, we're racists?

Include me out.

I have standards, thanks.

 

No, but we are required to be smarter than Simon, who apparently believes that any defense of a minority athlete that he considers unpopular or "bad" equals racism,which it doesn't.

 

I don't have a strong personal opinion about Le Batard one way or another - haven't read enough of his stuff or have enough knowledge about his personal situation to intelligently weigh in on his talent, ethics, etc.

But I will say this - yell it, actually: This board is filled with tales of how these days newspapers routinely fuck over their people, from making 22-year-olds cover preps 60 hours a week with no overtime, to Sportschick getting hosed out of $6k a year, to JRC/Lean Dean, buyouts in Tampa, layoffs in Fort Worth, etc., etc.

The newspaper industry is usually inhumane and often teeters on criminal treatment of its people. We know that to be an indisputable fact. It is run by greedy, clueless corporate screwheads instead of men and women who live to report the news.

If any journalist, from Le Batard to the agate clerk in BFE, can cut a good deal for himself/herself in this day and age, I say congratulations. I just wish it worked that way for more of us.

 

So one party being greedy and unscrupulous gives license to everyone else to be greedy and unscrupulous? Marvelous logic.

I'm only looking at this as a colleague and maybe a department head. As bad as morale is due to all the crap raining down from above, the last thing I want to see if a fellow staffer contributing to the slide by not being a team player. Cheating the day job is a big way in which someone shows he isn't a team player, because if everyone did it that way, the whole place would unravel. And when management tolerates it from a so-called star while holding a hammer over others who might try it, well, forget about camaraderie, chemistry, the whole being greater than sum of the parts and all the other fuzzy-wuzzy intangibles.

Just because some conscience-less pricks are running the business or feeding from two or three troughs at once doesn't mean I respect them. Or would respect myself for doing the same thing. Can't some of us draw the line somewhere?

I mean, holy crap, we work in an area where "teamwork" is revered and lauded. But everywhere outside of silly sports, it's OK to live by an every-man-for-himself creed?

I'll get out before I give in to that seriously shameless shit.

 

I know management at a lot of places is greedy and unscrupulous; I've yet to have anyone prove to me that asking for a leave of absence is greedy and unscrupulous.

Everything you describe above is a management problem, not a Le Batard problem.

Cheating the day job? Management doesn't think so; they not only allow it, they apparently encourage it.

That management cares more about keeping Le Batard happy than they do the rest of the staff, speaks volumes about how little they care about the rest of the staff.

I'm not saying the situation is fair or is right; all I'm saying is it's a problem created by management, not by Le Batard.

 

I see it as a win-win.

He won't be working . . . he won't be getting paid.

His salary and benefits are off the Herald books . . . maybe it saves a job or two.

As screwed up as it sounds, these days I am happy to see someone walk away by choice. If they are replaced, fine. If not, then maybe it prevented someone from being forced out.

 

That should not be a given. The Miami Herald has no reason to see itself as a farm club. It's not some 50,000 circulation steppingstone. It has every right to dictate how much outside activity it will allow. It apparently will allow a lot.

 

Great point - if his absence saves a few jobs, that counts as being a team player in my book.