Editorial by Matt Marquardt –
I’ll start by saying this is no offense to Globe Gazette editor Jane Reynolds, who I once worked with and know to be a fine person.
However, the brazen, indecorous propaganda that the Globe published in Sunday’s paper with her name under it is just loathsome. I realize Jane is a servant to her corporate masters. We can’t all pledge allegiance only to our own conscience while writing news stories and building powerful, informative web sites.
Apparently, the Globe wants to describe the North Iowa area using photographs of 50 objects. I’ve got a few recommendations for the Globe, which I will share at another time, but first, a few comments on the opening lines in her propaganda piece.
Some of Jane’s carefully-chosen words are “One of the strengths of Lee Enterprises… is a high value on community journalism … and … first and best source of local information.”
Halt the press. Stop right there.
Time for a dose of the truth.
Lee Enterprises, Inc. has no strengths. It is struggling to survive, Jane, and you know this. I could talk about your difficulties in even delivering your papers, dwindling revenues or the fact that some of your employees are more dedicated to making and serving beer than contributing to your news endeavors. I could discuss your $2 million gamble on a used printing press, an investment in a terminally-ill business model. I could talk about John Skipper, the tired old fart who sits in his red-haired Fuhrer’s City Hall office with the door closed and the shades drawn every time he has a hankerin’ for an Eric Bookmeyer snow cone.
I’ll “skip” all that and educate Jane on the real Lee Enterprises, the one she works for and knows all too well.
Lee is $800 million in debt and been forced into desperate measures to survive. As Lee struggles, it has proudly proclaimed that outsourcing its work has been a success as it continues to “transform” its “business model” ($2 million paper printers). The Globe knows first-hand what this outsourcing has entailed, and its former employees were the victims. Globe management has, for example, systematically dismantled its design department – you know, the people who design ads – and through its corporate labyrinth, sent the work to people who are not Americans. These jobs used to be done by our friends and neighbors here in North Iowa. They were paid a wage, and spent that money at local businesses that the Globe expects to advertise in its paper. Not so, anymore. Those dollars that used to pay local wages are now shipped overseas to stimulate economies in places like the Philippines and India. I can tell you all, I worked at the Globe for years, and I watched the creative people get laid-off and treated like second-class employees while the sales people were given awards and parties. Once, I watched a limo come to the Globe and pick up the publisher’s favorite sales person, to be taken to a celebration.
Lee proudly proclaimed on its website this year “We have outsourced ad production in 13 locations so far, resulting in faster turn-around time for advertisers, improved quality, less redundancy and lower cost.”
Apparently, to Lee and the Globe, foreigners work cheaper and do better work than our friends and neighbors.
Jane left that out of her story.
Shame on the Globe for again misleading its dwindling print readership.
Well written editorial.
Matt, did you see the recent “dig” in the Globe about you & NIT? I’ve looked and looked, but can’t find it again. It was an article about Mason City and all its attributes. There was a statement about a certain publication (unnamed) that continues to run our city down and wants everyone to see it in a negative light. It was within the last three weeks, I believe. I don’t think it was Skipper.
I heard about it. I was told the article was written mostly by Todd Blodgett and Skipper made a few editing changes to it so he could slap his name on it and pull his $12 an hour salary. The story was about national politics and strategies used by pol’s to beat their opponents. At the end, Skipper slipped in a sob story about how certain elites in city hall get punished by an un-named so and so. He never mentions anyone’s name or website address because he lacks the man parts that God hands out on the conveyor belt before he sends us all down from heaven to walk the Earth. Skipper ran out of gas a long time ago and he makes me snicker every time he proves what a thin-skinned ninny he is.
Very well said Matt. It is the old story of profits and big wages for the top manangers and screw the people who make it work. Pay the dinidends if there are any but lay off the poor guy making 25K a year. It goes on and on. There are several businesses here in town that the mayor supports in his country club setting that are discussing shutting down operations here and moving. This after the taxpayer has funded their improvements so the big wheels get more greese.