Printed Matters

I cringed with embarrassment this morning while reading the comments on Tampa Tribune intern Jessica DaSilva’s blog post in which she praised a plan put forward by her boss, Trib editor-in-chief Janet Coats. The plan called for more emphasis on local reporting. It also came with 10 layoffs, announced at a meeting. And, there was this statement from Coats:

People need to stop looking at TBO.com as an add on to The Tampa Tribune. The truth is that The Tampa Tribune is an add on to TBO.

This got some people hopping mad – mainly old-school journalists, the very people getting laid off and most anxious about their jobs and the future of newspapers. And so they vented their anger upon the hapless young intern, with comments like this:

If I were your boss, I’d fire you for posting this. Is this your first job?

And this:

I don’t agree with you about anything, but that’s beside the point. Don’t you feel dirty from sucking up to the boss in public? Good God, it’s repulsive.

And this:

I’m an editor at a medium-sized paper and I’m sending your name around to everyone I know in the business to make sure that you are never hired anywhere.

All made in chicken-hearted anonymous fashion. One complete asshole even went so far as this:

I don’t know which part of this little blog item made me most feel like projectile vomiting, the part where the writer is a fawning sycophant or the part where she wrote, “You go girl!” – the classic line that some woman utter when serving as a female friend’s stupidity enabler. Just to be on the safe side, I think I’ll puke on general principle.

Boy, you people get nasty when your industry starts to die, don’t you? Here, grab a clue: papers will be around for a while yet, but it’ll be a tough go. Get used to it. Go into PR if you don’t like it. Huddling around like a slobbering mob trying to protect the few crumbs left on your plates doesn’t do much for your public image.

I’ll just close on this note: