Monday, March 12, 2012

Detroit | Silverman to prep on Passion Topics

That's Mark Silverman, formerly editor of The Tennessean, and now a roving News Department executive who's apparently training community newspaper staffs on the evolving Passion Topics initiative.

He's scheduled for a three-hour meeting at the Detroit Free Press on March 29, according to one of my readers.

Silverman knows the Detroit market well. He was editor of The Detroit News until 2005, when Gannett sold it to MediaNews Group as part of a complicated three-way deal where Knight Ridder sold the Freep to GCI and relinquished control of the Detroit Media Partnership joint operating agency.

14 comments:

  1. Company man coasting to retirement, eh Mark? There's no other explanation. He's mean-spirited but not stupid.

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  2. Great, Darth Vader coming back to Detroit, one of the most despised individuals in Detroit News leadership history....

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    1. Your thinking of Frank Vega.

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  6. Don't worry. Silverman will be on his best behavior during his visits to newsrooms. It's only when he's in charge of a newsroom that his management "skills" of boorishness, overreaction, myopia and toxic behavior come out.

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  7. Gawd in Heaven! I pity those poor people in Dee-twoit... and that's saying a lot.

    I cannot imagine this guy stepping foot into any of the "real" community newspapers, those many small Gannett papers in small markets.

    Can you imagine him in some little burg in Indiana trying to find some high-class restaurant for lunch! Haw!

    The "commoners" would look upon him not unlike some alien dropped from the sky!

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  8. Anybody actually know how Silverman and Kate Marymont really get along (or not)?

    Having spent time with both of them, they seem like an odd match. Yet Silverman appears to be the point person preaching the gospel of "Passion Topics," which I believe to be one of Marymont's inventions.

    Anyone know for sure what dynamic is at work between those two corporate drones?

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  9. news 2000, reallife/realnews, now passion topics. same old same old. Siverman was despised everywhere he went.

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  10. Silverman prepping to inspire passion topics at Usa Today. Red storm rising!!!

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  11. Hmmm. I bet the passion topics are sports and the auto industry. Show me the money.

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  12. Mark and Kate Marymont get along great. She even answers his phone and I would think I'm controversial but she was very polite.

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  13. If we need training for 'Passion Topics,' can you imagine what we need to cover healthcare, the economy, poverty, the rape of our environment, corruption throughout our statehouses and town councils, kids leaving high school at a fourth-grade reading level, the trauma that kicks our troops and their families, the dismantling of the nation's newspapers and other vehicles of free speech to protect executive pay scales, the continuing abuse of children, campaign financing, etc.?

    Or maybe Mark could train us in something really valuable - how to do much much more with much much less - less time, less space, less support from editors, less planning, less coordination, less research, less healthcare, less opportunity to build sources, less reimbursement. Now THAT would be training. What we're doing now is just trying.

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