The New York Times puts the back-and-forth on George Gombossy all together.
Often in situations such as this one the truth is somewhere in the middle. The whole “Key Advertiser” thing, though, feels like the paper has already gone over the Slippery Slope… and went over it a long time ago.
And since when is winning justice for the mistreated consumer part of the “Gotcha News” genre? I used to perform this function for the Sun-Sentinel (a Tribune newspaper), at a time when investment scammers and corrupt contractors took their victims’ life savings. They might have gotten away with it were it not for what now is being called “gotcha” investigation. This is, I gather, less helpful than telling folks how they can get better mileage on their cars.
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Don’t you mean Sleepery Slope?
The astounding thing to me about George’s situation is that he is being characterized (by Rich Graziano in the NY Times piece, and in so many words, by Naedine in her response) as a disgruntled employee.
Having worked with George for years, it’s astounding to hear him be called disgruntled. George took on whatever the company asked of him in the years I was there, and in the years after, from what I can tell.
George worked for The Courant for 40 years, winning all kinds of awards and honors, and always bringing desire and commitment to the table. If that results in the kind of acrimonious dismissal such as George has encountered, I’m sorry, but the bullshit factor here is completely over the top on the part of management.
And it becomes clear yet again how far The Courant has fallen.
We should all be saddened by this.
Exactly so, Paul. And good job for the focus. Having a list of 100 advertisers floating around is a chilling thing in the first, second through 100th place.
And investigative consumer writing is a great service — maybe even the best a paper can provide., It is one thing to really know what’s going on in Madagascar, but when you help some elderly scam victim, or some neighbor who is being bilked with shoddy products or service THAT’s what a paper should be doing. If consumer writing is now to be the best items to get (from the 100 advertisers, of course) then what’s the difference between reprinting press releases? It certainly won’t be “gotcha,” but it most certainly won’t be journalism either.
It occurs to me that George Gombossy is not a disgruntled employee, but a KEY Disgruntled Employee.
I’m a long time Courant reader. I haven’t followed closely the paper’s business situation, but it’s clear they have been losing blood for a long time. It’s very sad.
Actually I trace the beginning of the end to when the LA Times took over and began running articles on winter snow and autumn leaves changing color.
I guess somebody new is writing headlines… they seem to have lost the use of verbs, and become merely topics.
Thanks to all of you who used to work there, for all the good reads.
p.s How about us disgruntled readers??