Was Consumer Columnist's Demise Due To Editorial Cutbacks Or Advertising Interference?
The story of consumer columnist George Gombossy's departure from the Hartford Courant has become a "he said"/"company said" argument that seems like something out of a consumer affairs column. Was Gombossy let go for reporting on an advertiser, as he alleges, or was the elimination of his position simply part of the cutbacks taking place all over the Tribune Company?
The New York Times took a look at the issue, talking to both Gombossy and his bosses.
Mr. Gombossy said he had the column [about mattress store Sleepy's] approved by his editor. But the article did not run, and on Aug. 3, he said, he was called into the office. "I was told that my position was being eliminated, and they were going to have a different kind of consumer columnist," he said. He said his performance reviews had always been strong. "They had no intention of laying me off until this happened."
[Editor and print platform manager Naedine] Hazell said the Sleepy's column was held, not killed. "George could have written about Sleepy's," she said. "We've never had and never will have a policy to favor advertisers in any form," she said. "Our concerns had largely to do with sourcing." In fact, she said, Mr. Gombossy's final column, which ran on Sunday, was about an advertiser, Connecticut Light & Power.
Mr. Gombossy was laid off because he was not interested in a different position, which would focus on consumer complaints and not investigative work, Ms. Hazell said. "My understanding is that he just wasn't interested in the direction we were going," she said.
The consumer columnist position was eliminated, and replaced with a print/TV shared position. Gombossy claims that this position had a significantly lower salary, and did not apply for it.
Is this very public dispute a disgruntled employee's revenge, or a troubled media company trying to cover up its lack of journalistic integrity? The parties' stories differ enough that it's difficult to tell.
Losing Job, Consumer Columnist Cries Foul [New York Times]
UPDATE: Gombossy has posted internal e-mails related to the meetings in question, and now claims that Hazell lied outright to the Times.
There are some interesting morsels in the chain of e-mails, and as a blogger this paragraph from an e-mail from editor Hazell caught my eye:
Going forward, I think that, journalistically, it would be
responsible to post online the comments that we also would feel
comfortable putting in print. I think that holds true in all cases,
whether the posts are about individuals, key advertisers or government
offices.
That's a pretty high bar. The intent is logical, since the idea is to keep problematic accusations from going out under the paper's name. But is that a fair standard? Can a blog have robust debate if all comments that say bad things about people, companies, or government agencies are held for indefinite review?
PREVIOUSLY:
Sleepy's Exec Says Bedbugs Come From People
Hartford Courant Consumer Columnist Fired For Pissing Off Advertiser
(Photo: ChodHound)
Post a comment
Comments:
I work for a Tribune paper but not in editorial. We have fired so many talented folks just because they no longer "fit in" with the more streamlined (less news) redesigns.
It wouldn't surprise me if HC would eliminate a position to secure ad revenue, which is just disappearing.
I'm working with three other people in my group supporting 800 users. We had 10 last year and 20 three years ago.
Gombossy said they wanted to take him off the investigative beat, and the HC rep admitted, "We said we wanted to go to more helpful news, and less gotcha news."
It's no wonder print newspapers are failing if they're dropping hard-hitting investigative journalism in favor of feel-good stuff and wire-service reprints. I already subscribe to GRIT for the warm fuzzies; I expect the local paper to hold peoples' feet to the fire. Alas, our local daily is dwindling into irrelevance.
"Hazell said the Sleepy's column was held, not killed."
Sure, and I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn.
Living in a city with a once-great Tribune paper (*sigh* Baltimore Sun, how I'll miss you when you're gone), I think I can say they don't really have much class at all when it comes to laying people off...
Unfortunately, both statements about the Courant's motives here, are consistent with the paper's recent history. They have, in fact, been cutting back, especially in the "news" part of the organization; so the Courant's claim that they wanted to eliminate the position, has some credibility. But they have also been keen on keeping advertisers happy, too, which makes Gombossy's story credible.
What tips the scale for me is that Gombossy's columns were among the most-read the paper offered online. He was also a weekly featured "talking head" on the morning news at Hartford's Tribune TV station (WTIC 61). Effectively, he was already in this "crossover" position they claim they were replacing his own with. He was already doing what they say they wanted someone to do, and he was popular enough that they were using him as a "draw" across their media properties.
So I just don't buy that they wanted to get rid of him.
@The Cheat: please explain this concept of how a "more streamlined" version of a newspaper actually contains less news. that's pretty much the complete opposite of streamlining.
sounds doubleplusungood to me.
They replaced one job with another at a lower wage, then claimed Gombossy "didn't apply for the job." They created an untenable and unacceptable situation, then blame the writer for their own actions.
What they did may have the veneer of legality, but it doesn't stand up to the test of smell. It stinks of skunks lying and blame-shifting, all in the name of increasing profit and pleasing advertisers by giving up the quality of their content.
It's yet another good argument for the US having a publicly funded and independent broadcaster (read: unaccountable to the government), much like the BBC in England, Deutche-Welle in Germany and CBC in Canada. Publicly run health care isn't the only thing such countries are doing right and the US is doing wrong.
@mac-phisto: Streamlining implies narrowing a focus toward being more efficient. What I think The Cheat means is that the newspaper decided it didn't need "excessive" areas like consumer columnists, but kept horoscopes and advice columns becuase people just love those, and I've never figured out why.
We should get specific with the differences between reader posts (like this one) and letters ran by the blogger in his blog post. Gombossy was taking letters sent to him, not following up on them as he would for a print story, then running them in his blog (which may very well had the same traffic or more as is column gets).
I think its stupid to police reader comments/posts in such a way, but when the blogger is running something himself, there needs to be more journalistic followup than he was doing.
If my local paper limited the online comments to only stuff they'd run in the paper, all the local racists would have nowhere to go to spew their bile.
Come to think of it, that's probably a *good* idea ...
@PsiCop:
"So I just don't buy that they wanted to get rid of him."
They may well have wanted, in effect, to give him a salary cut by eliminating his current job and replacing it with a lower-paid position.
@P_Smith:
You're welcome to push for a TV tax to fund a version of the BBC here in the US. I doubt you'd get very far.
@P_Smith: Sure, but the newspaper doing something crappy like that to save money is really different from the newspaper deliberately trying to get rid of this guy because he bashed an advertiser.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): The local paper where I grew up is so low quality I wouldn't be surprised if that's the sort of drivel they'd limit it TO!
@pecan 3.14159265: i fail to see how rehashing a bunch of crap from AP makes a paper more efficient, though. it just makes it a hard copy, once-a-day-updated RSS feed. that sounds pretty inefficient to me.
now, consolidating your AP update into a couple pages, differentiating your paper by offering independent, relevant, local coverage & eliminating fluff - that sounds like streamlining imo.
@NeverLetMeDown: If they were planning to replace Gombossy, why would they have used him — for several months — in an ad campaign meant to draw readers to his column and to his every-Monday-morning bit on the local morning news?
I wanna know what he had to say about Sleezy's, um I mean Sleepy's...
(You do know you don't have to pay their posted prices, and can haggle them down and get old mattress taken away free or reduced...)
"The consumer columnist position was eliminated, and replaced with a print/TV shared position that Gombossy claims had a significantly lower salary, and did not apply for."
That does give a lot of weight to what the employer claims. He apparently was aware that his position was being replaced with this other position, and he chose not to take the pay cut to keep working there.