Please don’t think the PD is sprouting balls. Please don’t print stuff like that on your blog. The PD is not growing balls at all.
Where was Editor Susan Goldberg after the racist cartoon about Cookie Thomas? Where was Reader Rep Ted “I can spin any BS” Diadiun? Where was Editorial Page Director Brent Larkin? Apparently they were all running for cover.
Goldberg didn’t bother to return calls to television reporters, according to aired reports. Isn’t it funny we work in a business where we want people to call us back? Maybe the TV folks should have masqueraded as print reporters and snuck into the fishbowl (the large windowed conference room). That’s the only place we see Goldberg after she dashes from her office to the fishbowl. Shit, she has worn a path between her office and the room. Other than that path, there is not much interaction with reporters.
As for Teddy, why didn’t he defend the comic or explain the situation in his Sunday column? Maybe he was too busy doing nothing or kissing Susie’s ass to keep his job. No, instead he writes about the Johanna Orozco series. Ol’ Ted didn’t have the nuts to take on a real issue.
What does Larkin write about after meeting with Cookie’s family? Nothing that defends Cartoonist Jeff Darcy or the statement he made to the newsroom via e-mail. Brent decided to write about the Akron mayor’s race. Wow, Brent, that was great leadership. Where did the Brent of yesteryear go? Maybe it’s time for Brent to pass the baton and promote Kevin O’Brien, who at least doesn’t shy away from thorny issues.
Management must have been afraid of Art McKoy, his cronies and the measly amount of picketers who protested at 1801 Superior. I never knew Black on Black had so much power. Power to the people, Art!
This article appears in Sep 19-25, 2007.
One thing is for sure: These two cowardly reporters, hiding behind their anonymity, have no “balls.” Don’t like what I’ve said, you invertebrates? There’s my name. Here I am.
Outside of the personnel mentioned, none of these comments are specific to The Plain Dealer.
When an entity has new leadership, changes will be made. If you have issues with it or do not like the management style, there are most likely avenues that can be persued to address them.
Additionally, singling out one-time incidents as representative of a person’s performance or decision-making as a whole is irresponsible and does nothing to prove a case.
I sense a lot of whining in the above post and not much in substantial issues that merit discussion.
You keep using that word:
… racist cartoon about Cookie Thomas …
I do not think it means what you think it means:
rac·ism (rÄ’sÄz’É™m)
n.
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
I applaud your use of the adjective “moron” to describe the individual who is responsible for Cleveland.com. It is dead-on accurate.
Oh please, Craig. Give us some credit. “One-time incident” indeed.
What management in its right mind takes a well-respected editor who’s regularly getting med team stories onto page one and moves him onto the business desk to edit car talk blather? How many reporters you think respected that winning decision? Do you think readers are too stupid to notice that medical coverage tanks now, when before it was brilliant?
How many “one-time incident(s)” you want? Because I can keep going.
Face it – the PD’s management sucks, and now your paper does, too.
Jen,
It is interesting you made the assumption that I work at a newspaper in your response to my comment. Outside of my mention of The Plain Dealer in my opening sentence to state that my comments were not specific to the newspaper, no mention was made of my employment, which is not at a newspaper or a media company. My comments were made with respect to companies and businesses in general. As I was taught, a person is not to assume anything for fear of making a mistake.
Secondly, I’m just wondering if it would be wiser for you to spend more of your time working to make The Plain Dealer a better newspaper instead of going to another news outlet to air complaints.
Best Regards,
Craig
As a former Mercury News reporter under the queen of mediocrity, I can report, you are about to spend months or years with the lamest manager you have ever worked for.
Goldberg added nothing to the Mercury News and lied at every turn. She’s doing the same there. In the PD’s story announcing her hire, she claimed to have instituted hires that boosted circulation at the Mercury among women and minorities. Well, circulation went down some 30 percent in her seven years there, so you can do the math.
She talked about being the smartest person in the room in a profile. Only if the room had George Bush in it. Her main news interest, besides chunky bits, is shopping for the trappings of the rich: her convertible Mercedes; her $1,000 a night spa treatments; her boring but expensive outfits.
She’s the George W of news, all style, no content.
Her news judgement can be described this way: she responds well to the last call of complaint she got.
You will never see her hang with reporters or have a real human interaction. She’s too afraid to be unveiled as not as bright as she thinks she is.
In her memo leaving the Merc, she thanked Managing Editor David Satterfeld– an old school drinking kind of journalist who, like anyone who succeeded under her, spent too much time kissing her ass –for “teaching her to be human.” She’s the only one who thinks she learned the lesson.
Much of her management style was a series of personal vendettas, and moving up writers who had flash and no substance. She promoted a music writer who spelled notable acts Beetles and Bob Dillon in a Grammy story, and didn’t have a clue who they were, but could crank out plenty of chunky bits.
Just seeing that phrase sends a chill down my spine…
She will do what she did here: try to make the paper appeal to people who don’t read with lots of pictures and graphics and idiotic drawings, and no real substance.
Then she’ll hide in her office and bad talk everyone behind their backs, while anything with real personality, information, risk, and style, gets sanitized through her prudish Victorian lense.
Guys, you better stay anonymous. She’ll be relentless in her revenge if she knows who you are.
Among Susie’s other great moves in san jose: When she married a guy with a kid, she decided that families were more important than entertainment, so buried the Wednesday entertainment section behind a new family section.
OF course in the country’s fourth biggest entertainment market, where the San Francisco Chronicle covers entertainment hugely, and has twice the circulation, this wasn’t the brightest move.
She followed that failure with a great idea for saving money: getting rid of the local section and combining it with the A section.
Reader complaints fixed both these errors. In another business, the manager who came up with this crap would have been fired.
Instead, Susie runs off to Cleveland, where rumor has it, she’s hoping to leverage her editorship into running one of the company’s New York fashion mags.
That is if the Peter Principle doesn’t catch up to her and have her running away with her tail between her legs.
I guess it takes balls for McIntyre to write today’s corporate kiss-up piece that puts MBNA’s feelings ahead of free speech. How about exposing the lender’s role in the predatory lending crisis, Mike?
“She talked about being the smartest person in the room in a profile. Only if the room had George Bush in it. Her main news interest, besides chunky bits, is shopping for the trappings of the rich: her convertible Mercedes; her $1,000 a night spa treatments; her boring but expensive outfits.”
boring but expensive? you have to dress conservative in this business–it’s not fashion industry. Unless you mean just like lots of ann taylor suits, etc.
I wonder if her political leanings, whatever they are, will affect the paper as well.
I’ve noticed more errors in the PD than there were 10 years ago. Times have changed. Let’s leave it at that.
I LOVE this stuff ! The original piece by the “two reporters” was a tremendous whine-fest, but then along came all those juicy tidbits from disgruntled Mercury News people. Here’s hoping there’s more ripe back-and-forth on the subject. Egads … talk about about fish wives !
So who will be the new managing editor?
It would be great to hear what former managing editor Tom O’Hara has to say about his brief time working with Susie.
No matter who is her managing editor, you can be sure of thing. She will be a rubber stamp for goldberg’s decisions, or she will be gone.
You want to see a great film depiction of Goldberg? See Michael Clayton. The female attorney for the cancer causing agri-biz…that’s her to a T.