Newspapers are a tough business to be in. But life is tougher when you’re stupid, as one of John Wayne’s characters famously said, and certainly some of the layoffs that befell the employees of the Gannett newspaper chain this week are that kind of tougher.
The chain is institutionally anti-gun, and its editorial employees have been hostile to legal gun owners on a visceral level. Some properties particularly stand out, like the Lower Hudson News, famous for “outing” the gun owners in its publication area, and for then hunkering down behind armed guards and demanding the arrest of plebes who — gasp! — criticized the wannabe post-American newspaper.
Over two dozen of the workers at LoHud and other Westchester County Gannett properties (which work from a single office) got axed this week. They get no severance, although some (union members, we think) get, briefly, a differential pay between their old salaries and unemployment insurance. To our delight, the nasty editor Caryn McBride is reported to be among the trash taken out at the News. We wrote way back in January:
Revenge tastes bitter, but victory is a kind of revenge that tastes sweet indeed, and the Rockland County Times [a LoHud competitor - Eds.] is headed towards victory.Indeed, the Rockland County paper reported on the layoffs across town with ill-concealed glee here, and confirmed that McBride, the woman who called the cops demanding her critics be arrested, was one of the 17 reporters and editors and 9 other staffers sacked. Best line from the Rockland County Times: “They don’t fire guns, they fire people.”
We had nothing to do with the job losses of McBride, her 25 former co-workers, and nearly 300 other of Gannett’s enemies of your liberties, but we can’t deny chortling with delight at the news. Just like we did when 700 others got whacked two years ago, causing great wailing and gnashing of teeth in the places journalists gather (welfare offices?). One takes particular delight in the dismissal of McBride. She is the airhead who was so alarmed that some New York citizens were actually getting permits under New York’s rights-denying laws that she actually reacted by making herself and her employees “feel” safe with armed guards from a bozo security firm that gives its guards eight hours training. Total. Because they were ”professionals.” (This might explain some of what comes out of the “professional” journalists at Gannett, too. That, and that everyone who had ever been taught to write an inverted-pyramid-format story and solicit quotes has been shown the door in favor of twentysomethings).
More at WeaponsMan
There is more to this.
ReplyDeleteNewspapers are struggling to stay alive to begin with. We get our news from the web now, not many are buying the papers anymore.
Even our Cleveland Plain Dealer, the largest paper in the state, has recently fired a bunch of people and stopped delivering home papers on a few days a week.
And the Lorain Morning Journal just down the street, they have been repeatedly filling for bankruptcy over the last few years.
And who knows what the Amazon owner (Jeff" Bezos)will do with The Washington Post he just bought for $250 Million?