Chatter: $300K executives in Corporate finance

An occasional peek at what you've been chattering about over the past 24 hours. Latest: Debating the worth of Corporate finance executives paid $300,000 each, a reader says. Plus: Your words of encouragement as I start looking for work.

Anonymous@12:01 p.m., piling on to an earlier comment about "bloated'' staffing at Corporate in McLean, Va., said: "The biggest bloat in McLean is in the corporate Finance department. They have six, count 'em, six VP and above level executives. That does not count the two finance VPs in the newspaper division for a total of eight. At 300K a pop, that is at least $2.4 million for executive number crunchers -- not counting company cars and country clubs. It looks like the folks that are making the rest of our life hell are not looking to get their own house in order."

Agreed, says @12:07 p.m.: "I am still having a very hard time believing these people didn't trim some folks up there after this latest round of cuts. It's just amazing. In economic terms, very few of these positions add any value to the products that the newspapers are trying to put out with reduced resources. I'd love to see a list of direct, objective contributions to bettering a newspaper or a process that any of these people have initiated or implemented. How many monkeys does it take to change a light bulb again?"

But @1:27 p.m. cautioned: "Before making wild comments about people in finance, you might want to consider that a multi-state and multi-country business like Gannett has many different state tax rules to comply with. Add that into the federal tax work, the SEC requirements and other responsibilities and I hardly think these people could be called 'monkeys.' Maybe if some of you spent more time writing quality stories, instead of posting on blogs, maybe the company would be doing better."

Whatever! says @1:59 p.m.: "Monkeys everywhere should be insulted!"

As I return to San Francisco from the beach resort of Ibiza, and a cloudy outlook for employment, I got lots of encouragement -- especially in my effort to generate income on this blog. "I hope you find a way to make Gannett Blog support you,'' says @5:50 p.m. "I'd subscribe. Or if you get advertising -- I will support that. I'm an ex-Gannettoid, 20 years of servitude, left before the human sacrifices -- and I'd like to ask those still in the trenches: Without this blog and the sharing of information, what would the past year have been like? Isn't this service invaluable to you? And if you say no, why do you read it?"

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