Former Courant consumer columnist George Gombossy is bringing the heat on his ex-employer.
Based on George’s reporting, a Superior Court judge is challenging the rates the newspaper charges for public foreclosure notices.
Gombossy reports that the Courant charges $1,431 for an ad that costs $158 in the Middletown Press.
Something tells me that the Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association’s campaign against allowing public notices to be published online (instead of print) is backfiring.
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Great job George and his cheering section! Maybe we can get some more reporters and editors laid off!
Keep it up gang. Screwing those of us who remain seems to be great sport.
Go go go!!!!!
The Dog’s self-professed love for his fellow employees who remain, minus the gang of three of course, has vanished as he continues to grasp at whatever straws are left to him.
I have to say I don’t get why, in this instance, George is perceived as the villain, even if his motives are not altruistic — as he would readily admit.
In response to the paper’s disingenuous and misleading PR campaign against putting public notices online, he has exposed some important facts that change the public’s understanding of the forces at play. It is perhaps unfortunate that someone with a checkered relationship with the Courant is the prime actor, but it is exactly the same process newspaper reporters have undertaken thousands of times. The difference, of course, is that this time the newspaper’s policies are under scrutiny, and they are not holding up well.
The remaining staff should focus some of its anger on the captains of industry who steered the company into such rough water, exposing its hard-working crew to danger.
Maybe the Dog can blog about this: my home delivery of the Courant today was the Sunday paper of Feb. 14. When I went to the market the “Sunday” paper was yesterday’s paper with Sunday’s date on it with all the inserts/flyers included. The convience store down the street had the correct paper/version. You just can’t make this up.
Of course back in the day when the Dog was still working at the Courant and I and others asked him to look into the Courant’s home delivery system was that ever a Watchdog “column?” Nope, the Trib paycheck trumped his role as a watchdog; amazing(not) these days are different.
Poor customer service is more damming in the long run than how much the Courant overcharging (maybe) for an ad or how much the Middletown Press is undercharging (maybe) for an ad.
I’ll leave with Dog’s words from “The Deep End” blog dated 8/25/09 (that’s after he left):
“I love the Courant. Other than for these three people everyone else at the newspaper deserves readers’ support. Please DO NOT stop buying the Courant – the 130 honest, ethical, smart, hard-working staffers and hundreds of other employees deserve your support.”
Dave – Frankly it takes away from your outstanding journalistic credentials to be attacking me for exposing what your employer is doing to hurt the public. If you think I published something that was incorrect, you should point it out and I would be happy to correct it. Otherwise I would think about how your public comments reflect on your perceived integrity – which I have known for 20 years to be of the highest standard. My recollection is that you put a lot on the line when exposing how your publisher was “helping” a fellow employee. George
Is there really anything sinister about an ad costing less in a paper that reaches a few thousand Middletown/Cromwell-area readers than it would in another paper that reaches multiples of tens of thousands of readers across a wide swath of the state’s central valley, and elsewhere? If this is our idea of mathematics, I can recommend a good community college that offers “developmental” algebra classes that might provide some perspective to comparing apples and oranges.
P.S. I believe legals belong in newspapers, even ones that have fired me, butt-handed PR campaigns notwithstanding.