No more rumors

With no way to know if they are real or trolls, I have had enough. I believe that posting rumors is causing more harm than good.  I will continue to post possible jobs in the area if anybody wants to share them. I will continue to allow discussions in the comments that meet my guidelines.

If Tuesday is Cut Day, or if or whenever it happens,  I will post whatever I am sent about numbers and departments. Do not assume that I have some backdoor pipeline to management. I do not. The only reason this blog served us well the last time was that many people shared real information they had.  By the end of that first day, we had collectively assembled the list you see to the right, needing only minor adjustments. Do post comments or send me emails. 

I will also post any messages from those who have lost jobs that they want to share with us. The farewells from last time are archived on a link to the right.

If the layoffs do happen and are anything as large as some of the chatter, there is a special place in Hell for whoever in HR or the legal department or whatever other layer of the corporation decided this was a good way to do this, shared by whichever of the top bosses agreed and issued the orders to stay silent.  We in the newsroom are journalists, from the copy editors to the researchers to the photo editors to the line editors to the photographers to the reporters to anybody I have left out. Journalists have a need to know set deep in our DNA. All of the previous layoffs, the bosses gave us enough advance notice to let us plan and to satisfy some of that inbred curiosity.  To leave us this time with nothing but rumors that have been impossible to validate was a needless cruelty.

Why could you not have been as informative as the last four rounds. Acknowledge publicly that cuts are coming. Say that you expect to have them completed by some approximate date. Or if the rumors are all false, say something about that. There are legal limits to what can be released. We are not stupid. But you certainly could have told us this time what you told us in the past.

There are no good ways to do this that will not cause pain and leave horrible scars. The first round of layoffs years ago where people were escorted out of the building in a few minutes was needlessly painful. So is this. 

Anybody who disagrees with anything here is welcome to comment.

Happy Labor Day.