Fired News Journal Reporter Responds
Khristopher Brooks has a post up over at Huffington Post regarding his hiring and firing by The News Journal. Turns out getting fired by The News Journal may have been the best thing that ever happened to him.
And then my cell phone rang.
Phil Freedman, the News Journal’s local editor, called and said the newspaper is rescinding its job offer. I was being fired for using the company’s logo on my personal blog and quoting the executive editor from my job offer letter.
I was at a loss for words. When I finally spoke I said, “Well, can I just take it down? I know Romenesko’s cell number. I can have him take it down, I’ll take mine down, this never happened.”
Freedman said the decision was out of his hands and that the final axe came from the publisher, HR and corporate. To me, that says there was an internal conversation about this, a conversation that I wasn’t invited to join. Had I been brought in, I could have said “I’m sorry. I didn’t know this was bad. I’ll take it down. End of story.”
Nice, News Journal. Real nice.
But here’s the good part, the good part for Brooks.
I pondered all this while sitting at my desk at Black Voices. I looked at the computer screen and suddenly I had a handful of emails. Job offers. All across the country, from as near as Connecticut, out to Iowa and even more pouring in today. I received an offer to write a essay for a popular online magazine and my followers on Twitter have reached out to me. Most of them are saying, “ahh, you didn’t want to be with Gannett anyway.”
And I appreciate those condolences. I appreciate all the new Twitter and Tumblr followers I’ve received. I want everyone to know I’ll be OK. I’m from Detroit, a city that knows how to respond in the face of negative publicity and I’m no different. Hopefully the next time you’ll see my name, it’s under a headline and not in it.
Maybe Khristopher really did dodge a bullet. I think if I were the NJ, I would have made sure he got what he did wrong here, but challenged him to really raise their social media profile since he clearly knows how to work it.
Interesting how this blog LOVES the News Journal when it agrees with it and HATES it when it doesn’t. Talk about classy!
Gannett clearly has an enormous stick up its collective ass. Who can ever take them seriously again about a social media strategy?
If any News Journal reporter would like to learn how to post the News Journal logo on their personal blog, just ask here; we’re happy to help.
Southern Del, Not really.
“To me, that says there was an internal conversation about this, a conversation that I wasn’t invited to join. Had I been brought in, I could have said “I’m sorry. I didn’t know this was bad. I’ll take it down. End of story.”
This statement shows that the News Journal made the right decision.
He assumes that he should be included in the “internal conversation” concerning his employment, and do you really want a journalist who says “I didn’t know this was bad” when he takes quotes from private correspondence without permission.
Do you really want a newspaper managing editor who doesn’t know about the Barbara Steisand effect?
“Interesting how this blog LOVES the News Journal when it agrees with it and HATES it when it doesn’t. Talk about classy!”
Talk about moronic! There’s a big difference between the work done by journalists and the “work” done by management. Some of the journalistic work is quite good, while Gannett management — and local management in Wilmington has been a glowing example of this for 30-odd years — constructed the template for the destruction of print journalism.
Does anybody pay the fee for delawareonline.com ? It should be free. I guess the advertising revenue alone isn’t cutting it.
I pay the fee and have stopped buying the dead tree version of the paper. Since I never got my paper delivered, I bought the paper every day I was here to do it. So I’m getting the better deal, I think.
We pay as well. And, no, it shouldn’t be free.
It IS still published free online.
And when you log in to read the paper, don’t forget they are not just making the fee you give them, but they are also almost certainly selling your marketing profile based on your highly targeted reading habits. If you have a News Journal login you should be noticing new kinds of spam by now.
When you access the News Journal website, it instantly loads around 100 cookies from 25 different external web sources, mostly for tracking and advertising purposes.
“And, no, it shouldn’t be free.”
Why not? That’s a lot closer to what it’s worth than $15/month.
I freep it.
I read it everyday. I don’t pay. Gannett is either too stupid to build a real paywall, or they view it as an internet illiteracy tax.
It’s based on cookies. If you reset your cookies, you can get the whole thing for free, the same thing as with the New York Times. If NYT hasn’t figured out how to do it, Gannett sure as heck can’t.
You don’t even need to clear your cookies if you use Firefox or chrome. Simply open a new “incognito” window in Chrome & read til your 5 free articles are expired. Close that window & open another new window to continue reading.
“do you really want a journalist who says “I didn’t know this was bad” when he takes quotes from private correspondence without permission.”
Who owns the private correspondence? If it was sent to Brooks, isn’t it reasonable to believe that the decision was Brooks’ whether to make it public? It makes me wonder what was in the letter that the TNJ didn’t want anyone else to see. As for the logo, the paper can’t say they are protecting a copyright. That logo is used all over and Gannett isn’t sending out cease and desist letters. I can’t figure out what Brooks did that warranted termination.
@AM “Who owns the private correspondence?”
The sender owns it, but the recipient has fair use rights. What he posted was entirely within his legal rights. What right he lacked was the right to not get fired.
FBH: If someone sends you a letter (and you haven’t signed an NDA), then you may forward it to anyone you please. You may post it up for all to see. And when you hit that send button for emails you’re sending, you are granting the recipient rights… so think twice.
The News Journal apparently disagrees with your assessment LE.
If I had to make a guess, I would say that the News Journal had buyers remorse about hiring some social media guru, and this was their out.
The letter and logo issues were clearly excuses to get rid of a guy they realized was an incredible egomaniac and a loose cannon. That job is filled by Cris Barrish, who doesn’t tolerate other swelled heads around.
Pretty cheap shot to deliver with that handle.
… says someone named “Geezer.” You parents stick you with that?
Barrish is universally disliked among his colleagues. Not a single reporter there would piss on him if he were on fire. He produces award-winning work because he takes three months to write a single story. There’s nothing magical about that, yet the guy sees himself as the Second Coming of Woodward.
Meanwhile, real talent by reporters who actually contribute to the paper on a regular basis – Beth Miller and Jeff Montgomery stick out – gets overlooked, ignored and taken for granted.