Tennessean buyouts

http://nashvillecitypaper.com/news.php?viewStory=57277

 

Larry Woody?

Goddamn.

 

Wow, 20 years of service get you roughly 10 months of pay ...

This sucks.

 

Woody was the NASCAR and outdoors writer and occasional columnist. Older fella, been there forever -- not much of a writer, but beloved by the good ol' boy network in Nashville.

 

geez... hate that for Woody. One of the best guys out there on the racing beat from the dealings I've had at the racetrack.

 

Not much of a speller, certainly, back in the day when I was editing his stuff, but I always thought he had skillz as a writer. The game has changed in 30 years, of course, but he's the first (and maybe only) person I ever saw who could dictate a real gamer with his notebook in one hand and the phone in the other.

And it wasn't like he had the story written down in the notebook, he was working from his raw notes. Quite the high-wire act, and I never saw him fall off.

I thought Outdoors was a real good fit for him. If I recall correctly, the previous outdoors guy, Charles Searcy, also got shuffled off in some fashion.

Ghianni I never worked with but I always had a high opinion of when he was in Clarksville (wasn't it? yeah, I think so).

A couple of the others I knew back in the day. For my part, I thought it would have been funny if Larry Taft had taken the buyout so soon after being named SE, but of course that wasn't going to happen.

 

I thought this was all supposed to happen a year or two ago?
Or at least that was the rumor then, that Woody was one from sports who would be leaving along with a handful of other newsroom employees.
And how could Green take the buyout if he doesn't work for them anymore.
I thought he was doing the Freedom Forum or something like that

 

Geez, 66 wanted out and 24 were accepted. What does that say about the paper.

 

Gannett's cancer is spreading throughout the industry.

They chew you up, they spit you out, and one of the real dumbasses of the industry picks up the carcass, shakes it, throws it against the ground and steps on whatever falls out of it.

If I come back reincarnated as a vigilante, I know some people who are in jeopardy. That is, if I die tomorrow. If not, then I'll follow their family tree.

 

Whoever it was here who said Woody wasn't much of a writer is clueless. He's no Rick Reilly, but Woody's consistently churning out good copy and some of it makes you laugh without his trying too hard. And no one knows NASCAR better than he does, even though it's been a coon's age since the big circuit went through Nashville.

 

Sounds like Woody should stick to what he knows best then. I've read him try to write about other sports and it wasn't pretty.

 

Damn! You usually hear of few people wanting to accept a buyout. Seems like everybody there wanted to get the fuck out.