Desperately Seeking the News
If you think Gannett’s a shitty place to work, you’re more right than you think. The nation’s largest newspaper chain is investigating allegations of plunging morale at Cherry Hill, N.J.’s Courier-Post, run by former Tennessean editor E.J. Mitchell, after a well-circulated anonymous letter detailed how both the “men’s and women’s bathrooms have been deliberately soiled by feces in separate incidents.”
Staffers at the Courier-Post blame the paper’s literal and figurative mess only partly on Mitchell, who they characterize as an amiable, if erratic, boss with questionable judgment. The real culprit is Gannett—for running a newsroom on the cheap. The company, they say, continually fails to replace departing reporters and to update aging publishing and design software. The net result is an unimpressive paper and an anxious, frustrated staff that’s been galvanized by an artful crap left in the office can a few weeks ago.
“The placement of the poop in the men’s room didn’t seem like it was an accident,” one Courier-Post staffer tells Desperately from the bowels of Gannett. “It wasn’t near any stall or toilet.”
The analysis goes on. “Journalists definitely like to gossip, and word spread about it in no time,” the staffer says. “I think everybody thought of it as a protest.”
A few weeks later, someone else crapped in the women’s room, but our source wonders if the “circumstances of how the poop was distributed made it seem like it was something of an accident.”
Good times.
It was the anonymous letter, as best as Desperately could tell, that broke the news of the, um, protest movement, with the author attributing it to something worse than just a bad lunch. Addressed to the publisher of the Courier-Post and reprinted on a well read (and unauthorized) Gannett blog—a veritable refuge of Gannett dissent—the missive also tells of overworked employees, high turnover and a chaotic, mismanaged workplace “embodied by the soiling of the bathrooms.”
Finally, the letter writer alleges that the paper’s scrambling staffers have not been paid for overtime work and threatens to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor.
No doubt because of that looming threat, Gannett corporate doesn’t dismiss any of the allegations outlined in the correspondence.
“We have seen the letter, and we are looking into it,” says Tara Connell, Gannett’s vice president of corporate communications.
In fact, Gannett will be dispatching human resource personnel to interview Courier-Post employees about some of the issues raised in the letter, including overtime. That would mark the second time in recent weeks company officials have paid a visit to the New Jersey newsroom to investigate morale and work issues, with the first time coming on the heels of the premeditated dumping. You can only wonder when they will plop in on Nashville.
Desperately recently chronicled the combustible management style of Tennessean editor Mark Silverman, who antagonized his newsroom when he hurled a newspaper at features editor Cindy Smith. Now gossipy reports are gushing out of 1100 Broadway that Silverman screamed at a janitor and called him a series of names after he walked in on the man polishing a journalism award. In fairness to the janitor, the plaque was probably covered in cobwebs and needed a good scrubbing.
If this encounter sounds like a fuzzy anecdote, it certainly echoes long-running stories of how Silverman runs his newsrooms. A 1997 Columbia Journalism Review piece said that staffers at the Courier-Journal in Louisville characterized Silverman’s brief stint as editor as a “reign of terror.” Of course, reporters can deal with an overbearing tyrant if he’s pushing for great reporting, but not so much if he’s using his weekly column to shill for his paper’s mommy blogs.
Silverman did not return numerous messages from Desperately asking him about his alleged encounter with the janitor. In any case, we humbly suggest he be as amicable as possible to his newspaper’s cleaning crew. The time may come when he really needs them.
Vic-tory for Channel 4
The hotly contested February TV sweeps have concluded and, though the final numbers aren’t in yet, it’s not too soon to congratulate WSMV-Channel 4 for a soaring month. The station’s ratings are up for nearly every newscast, while holding steady at 10 p.m., a particularly impressive feat considering that the Hollywood writer’s strike has obviously hurt the prime-time lead-in to the evening news. WTVF-Channel 5 still won the 10 p.m. and morning newscasts while running a close second to Channel 4 at the 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts.
As usual, WKRN-Channel 2 finished a distant third, though the station has shown modest gains from a year ago. Channel 4 began its impressive book with its exposé of juvenile court clerk Vic Lineweaver’s shoddy work habits. At one point, Channel 4 filmed Lineweaver at home in his bathrobe while reporter Jeremy Finley called the clerk on his cell phone. His Ned Flanders legs glimmering on camera, Lineweaver told Finley that he was, in fact, meeting about a grant. When Finley called Lineweaver on the lie, the former Metro Council member looked like he wanted to be anywhere else, even a Gannett bathroom.
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