Today hurt ... a lot.

There was a letter to the editor where a long-time reader just UNLOADED on Doug in a well-written, multi-faceted attack that would've blasted him back to the 1970s. It attacked his sports knowledge, his usage of the English language and even his grasp of reality in general. It wasn't mean-spirited in nature, but constructed with more thought than I'm displaying here. (That's not saying much, but you understand...)

Needless to say, it never saw the light of day in print.

Except throughout the sports department.

But hey, good for him for securing a gig for so long. It takes a special kind of person to avoid getting axed so many times under these dire conditions.

But then, a guy like PaulO gets the boot, and you scratch your head.

 

Would love to see THAT text.

 

I'd like to see that too. I know a lot of guys from the old Her-Ex days and it was explained to me that he was brought in as a desk guy, couldn't hack it, so they gave him a beat to get him out of their way. Then he couldn't handle the beat so they made him a columnist.
He just kept moving up because he was so bad at what he was doing. (Gotta love management).
Likeable guy, I guess. But it seemed like whenever he sat next to me at a game I was covering as a beat guy, he would ask me all kinds of questions about team and the next day, all of my observations and opionions would be in his column.
And he would continually rip people in various capacities of sports, like he railed against a former Dodgers general manager. Then a couple of months later, he would write: "Well, I finally met (the GM), he's not such a bad guy after all."
I wish one of those PT desk guys would pop him in the mouth.

 

Failing upwards.

 

And people wonder why newspaper editors make such shitty managers!

 

When the L.A. Herald-Examiner died, Long Beach was one of the places that found spots for some members of a damned good sports staff, and it was big-league enough that some of them stayed, including the guy who's being ripped here now. A damn shame that there's no one who can do for the P-T people what the P-T once did for others. But to those who remain and those who have lost their jobs, go on knowing that you did very good work for a long time, that you played a lot bigger than your resources, that you not only served your readers but showed all of us what kind of ambitious work can be done by newspapers like yours in the shadow of much larger papers. I never worked there, but I admired your newspaper and your section for a long time. Good luck.

 

Frank: Well said, as usual.

 

Great post and one that needs to be followed.

When I lost my job 5 1/2 years ago, there were people I worked with and people I considered friends who wouldn't have anything to do with me, for fear they'd be "tarnished" in some way. One of those moved on to a major SoCal metro. He later called me and even though I have the highest regard for his credentials as a reporter and writer, I have no regard at all for the way he treated me.

So I was very cool.

One of my college friends, someone who was at my wedding, someone who I considered a close friend and who I used to visit when I was in Chicago, sent me an e-mail saying that all my e-mails were "bitter" and that she didn't want to talk to me anymore.

I have no use for people like that. Don't be people like that. Treat these people with the respect and compassion they deserve.

 

tripp, i think you might find that fighting your good fight is irrelevant once you have others around who depend upon the steady paycheck you damn well earn for survival. the actual good fight is making sure your family of four isn't living in a car because you can't afford to pay the mortgage, regardless of the circumstances.

killing yourself so the owner(s) of your rag -- the same one(s) you've never met and who could give two shits about you as a human being -- can continue to milk a 25 percent profit margin for as long as possible before the industry dies? for my money, that's not a good fight, my friend. that's being a sucker.

 

Having gone through this myself more than once, I know it to be gut-wrenching.

But as others have said, often you land in a much, much better place.

Sometimes it takes three months or six months or a year, but losing a job with a shitty employer isn't the end of the world.

If you're lucky, instead it'll open up new worlds for you.

It just sucks going through it.

 

lono - in all sincerity, i think this guy says it best:

"Foreman says these jobs are going boys
And they ain't coming back to your hometown."

 

Did I miss something? I don't know what this references. Is he the columnist Mateo mentioned on Page 2? If not, I have no context for this post and don't understand it.