Time to heal — and move on
August 22nd, 2008 at 01:32pm Linda Grist Cunningham
There’s not a thing I can write about this week’s layoffs at the Rockford Register Star that won’t get me smacked in the face by someone. For every decision I made, for every comment I write, someone — often anonymous — will have a “better” one and it frequently starts with “You’re the one who ought to have been fired….” Yeah, whatever; I’m not asking for sympathy. As my dad said: That’s why they call it work. If it were easy and everyone could do it, they’d be doing it.
What really annoys me, though, are the people who seem to rejoice in the pain of others. I am astounded by the venom that follows such announcements, and I’ve seen it happen enough times with other companies that when we posted our layoff story, I turned off “comments.” That didn’t sit well with some folks. As I told one poster who wanted to comment on the story, we’re hurting enough right now that I decided we didn’t need to listen to what were sure to be rants that we deserved to die. Frankly, I may do the same thing for other companies, if, heaven forbid, they face troubled times. There simply is something deeply wrong with people who get a charge out of “kicking you when you’re down.”
Anyone who has ever been without a job through no fault of their own (and I have, by the way) knows the turmoil, the feeling of being lost in a maze. That’s true for the survivors, too. I saw how tough it was for the staff in the News Tower — in every department — to get back to work minutes after the layoffs spared them. As I said to the newsroom staff Monday afternoon: Wewill have to grieve while we work. There will be a Web site today and a newspaper tomorrow. That’s our job.
As the weekend comes around, where do we start on Monday? Actually, the answer is simple: We’ll be the Rock River Valley’s primary source for news, information and advertising in print and online. That doesn’t change.
Our success in connecting with 80 percent of the adults in the market doesn’t rest solely on how many people we have, but on the quality of what each of us does. Quantity does matter; I’d be stupid to think otherwise. But quality will trump quantity. When we move forward, it will be the quality of what we do that matters: the quality of our local news content, the quality of the customers we connect to advertisers, the quality of our customer service.
When the dust settles, we will be fewer. We will not be less.
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized
4 Comments Add your own
1. the dude abides | August 22nd, 2008 at 4:02 pm
@LGC —
Thanks for following up on this story. Here’s my quibble (you knew it was coming):
Why is your staff more deserving of protection from vitriolic comments than the general public? It seems mighty unfair.
You allow those same anonymous accusations and rude comments on stories about deaths, arrests, etc, where the tone inevitably takes a bad turn — where people tend to “get kicked while they’re down” — but not where it concerns the RRStar?
In fact, the only time I ever see comments disabled is when the story subject is the RRStar itself. You don’t seem to employ this preemptive “no feedback” strategy on any other stories. Maybe it’s because those “rants” drive your page views up, generating more advertising dollars for the RRStar.
I know that as the big boss lady, you have a responsibility to treat your staff well, but I don’t think that responsibility includes staunching criticism simply because it strikes close to home. IMHO, if you’re going to allow comments on murders, deaths, and other highly charged local topics, you should do the same for a story about job losses.
You’re the gander. We’re the geese.
What’s good for us should be good for you,
2. hokumboy | August 25th, 2008 at 7:57 am
You noticed that too, dude?
3. Linda Grist Cunningham | August 25th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Good points all. And, worth serious consideration. As you know, I’ve taken down a ton of comments, including complete threads. Maybe more are in order.
4. John Biltmore | August 25th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Linda,
It’s simply my opinion but if you’re going to start taking down more and more comments because they are unpleasant…you might as well get out of the comment business altogether. Because sooner than you think, this is all you’ll be doing, evaluating comments that someone objects to. It’s a slippery slope. The fact is, you’ve invited the public to the party. You’re going to have to take some bad with the good.
This isn’t an argument for “anything goes.” I have read your terms of service and I think they are abundantly clear — stay on topic, no swearing, no threats, no libel, etc. Perhaps you need to make them more prominent and universally enforced.
But please, don’t get in the business of picking and choosing based on some subjective standard of propriety. It’s unbecoming for a medium that stands for openness and freedom of expression.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed