Blogs

It mayend up being smaller, but the Post will ALWAYS have bigger cajones than the S-S. Remember who put the public officials in prison.

drawers?! the post will always have bigger drawers? check yourself, cuckold.
and check yer own draws. last I heard the post was neutering itself with its reorganization that appears to be prompting a mass exodus. talk about shrinkage and draws.

Sad news here, but what's frustrating for those "lucky" enough to keep their jobs is that they'll probably just be asked to pick up the load left from the layoffs in order to maintain the status quo.

Comes now a modest proposal:
Some brave soul should collect and publish ALL the various Dear Staff Emails written by the army of corporate asshole publishers like the Post's Doug Frankin (who couldn't carry Tom Giuffrida's jock strap -- let alone empty Jack Knight's ash tray back in the day).
The goal?
Somebody's gotta nail this chorus of smarmy bastards for singing the same sad song about (A)hard times for our stockholders, (B)the need to create a better "product" for our advertizers versus the need to cut staff and finally (C)the old "I look forward to working with you."
Oh yes.
A good title for this collection of cliched corporate bullshit might be: "Pass the KY Jelly."

A response to Mr. de Groot:

No one likes these memos, but anyone who blames the publisher for the pending cutbacks or criticizes him for leveling with his staff is deranged. Franklin's been at the Post for a month. Anyone really think these big changes are his bright idea? How would you handle the situation if the president of Cox Newspapers told YOU you had to reduce your new newspaper's operating costs by some absurd figure within the next six months?

Franklin has the decency to give the Post staff fair warning. Since when is that a sin? I'm so sorry to see Mr. De Groot is displeased that Franklin didn't brainstorm any creative new ways of communicating the same industry-wide financial problems we've been hearing about for a decade. Would he have preferred a memo in Olde English or Faulknerean stream-of-consciousness, blaming unicorn-riding fairies who steal away with newspaper revenues and convert them into star dust castles? Or perhaps Mr. de Groot cares to offer a better template?

It's fun to kick around overpaid execs, but let's face it folks: These problems are the result of a dying business model, nothing more. There's no villians here. Just victims. You can't blame the dinosaurs for the Ice Age and you can't blame newspaper publishers for the Internet Age. Anyone who thinks the industry could have or should have done anything to prevent this is embarassingly naive. And if I'm wrong, let them unveil their silver bullet here.

The point: Let's stop pointing fingers and endure this with some dignity. Every publisher who announces cutbacks isn't a souless prick and every old ink-stained crank who had to fortune to work in simpler times isn't a wise old sage. Modern publishers are just unlucky and most cranks are just old.

this has nothing to do with the current business woes, which are nothing new. it has more to do with the current strategy to gear everything to the web site, which is the worst in south florida. and the person running the show, not frank but someone whose name isn't even worth mentioning, doesn't even know what a fucking web site is, let alone how one works.
so sorry to see the paper and talented reporters wither away.

In the old country, we would call such men as the new breed of newspaer executives "Uhkers".
Which makes Palm Beach Post Publisher David Franklin a COX UHKER.
The Uhk, for those of you not familiar with hard times in Mother Russia, was a large work sleigh used by the peasants.
During bad winters, huge packs of starving wolves would attack the peasants in droves -- causing the peasants to pile into their ox-driven Uhks to flee in terror.
Sadly, the wolves were faster than the lumbering ox that pulled the heavy Uhk sleighs.
And so, in order to survive,the peasants would toss one of their weaker members to slow the howling beasts.
Later, during Stalin's frequent purges, Party leaders would survive by turning in a lower party member to the KBG for Stalin's firing squad, or death in the Siberia.
Naturally, these powerful party members who survived by tossing their weak to Stalin's wolves became known as "Uhks."
Which is why Doug Franklin, as a Cox publisher, is a COX UHKER.

i don't get it gregori, how is this franklin's fault? he's just dealing with economic realities, ain't he?