New | Beavis and Butthead's Comment-A-Thon!

Anonymous@7:05 p.m. suggested I let the comments rip from now through this blog's shutdown, a week from tomorrow: "Why moderate the posts at this late date? Just let us go out, in a blaze of glory, just like we came in."

Well, why not? Employees have long been denied the chance to speak up without fear of retribution. So, barring something unexpected, for the next eight days, I'll back-read everything you post, keeping an eye on news, and only removing the really awful stuff. Which, of course, leads to Corporate. (Hah!)

Journalists like Dan Neuharth -- son of you-know-who -- are already working on books about the collapse of the modern newspaper industry. Years from now, I expect historians will read Gannett Blog as a case study of what happened to the nation's biggest newspaper publisher, one now edging closer to bankruptcy. Management is racing to lay off up to 1,400 newspaper workers in time to offer another tray of dismembered bodies to Wall Street analysts two weeks from today, as evidence it really means business this time.

Historians will find plenty of junk among Gannett Blog's comments. But they'll also find really thoughtful commentary, like the one I posted Sunday: Why the company is rotting from the bottom up, as much as it is from the top down.

And here's what they'll find, much too often, of management's insight: "You suck, Jim." That gem has been posted anonymously at least 25 times since March, most recently at 3:18 a.m. today, according to a Gmail search. (So creative! It's almost as if an occult hand had placed it on the author's save-get key!)

Whatever, our new week-long Comment-A-Thon is management's chance to redeem itself, so it's not represented for posterity by posters who read more like Beavis and Butthead, than leaders of a Fortune 500 newspaper publisher.

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