"Phil Currie has remained the soul, the champion of the eternal values of good journalism -- public service, fairness, relevance, diversity."
-- Carolyn Washburn, top editor of The Des Moines Register, commenting on the retirement of News Division chief Phil Currie. (Cincinnati Enquirer Editor Tom Callinan also signs his occasional comments. You can, too!)
How do you know it was her who wrote the entry?
ReplyDeleteEven if it is her, who cares what she thinks?
ReplyDelete11:45 pm: Excellent question! I confirmed its authenticity before posting that item.
ReplyDeleteOK, Phil is leaving. Let's move on. Will his job be filled, and, if so, by whom? Or will his job be divided? It would be nice to know who is supposed to be the corporate guiding light of LICs in the future.
ReplyDeleteSo a high-ranking member of the Gannett Tonton Macoutes heaps praise on the fallen Duvalier. What more could we have expected from one of the Kool-Aid drinkers?
ReplyDeleteDear Ms. Washburn,
ReplyDeleteHere are some questions you and others who defend Phil Currie should think about:
1/If Phil Currie was so good for Gannett newspapers, why hasn't Gannett won any kind of Pulitzer since 2000? It can't be that the newsrooms of Gannett are not capable of winning this award, the most respected in journalism.
2/If Phil Currie cared so much about employees, why did he, time after time, promote despicably bad managers of people like Mark Silverman to head newsrooms? The transgressions of Silverman, one of Currie's acolytes, go well beyond throwing stuff at editors. Through his toxic personality and fanatical commitment to Currie's initiatives, Silverman created gulag-like conditions at newsrooms in Rockford, Louisville, Detroit and, now, Nashville. It is to Currie's discredit that he would promote someone like him.
3/If Phil Currie stood for high standards, why did work by the last two Gannett papers to win a Pulitzer (the Detroit News in 1994 and the Great Falls paper in 2000) fail to win a Best of Gannett award? In the case of the Detroit News, the stories that won a Pulitzer failed to PLACE in any Gannett contest.
4/If Phil Currie stood for excellence, why do the Gannett papers year after year do poorly in the Society for News Design contests? Could it be that Currie and his staff shoved a cookie-cutter approach to page design down the throats of Gannett staffs across the nation?
5/If Phil Currie stood for diversity, why did he impose a system of tokenism called "mainstreaming" that led Gannett papers across the nation to quote certain people simply because they met a demand for EEOC-approved minorities to be in the paper? This practice is demeaning to minorities.
She loves Phil Currie. She must also thinks this website is run by corporate. ("It has Gannett in the name.")
ReplyDeleteThat's the same brilliance with which she runs (with an iron fist) her newsroom, er... information center.
Here's a hint, Carolyn. They aren't laughing with you.
Thank you for playing. Next!
I doubt if I will have an excuse to visit the newsroom on 12/2. Would someone please report on whether Carolyn wears black that day?
ReplyDelete