Monday 22 June 2009

Lies, damned lies and the management

Do you know what I hate about newspaper managers? It's not that they are cunts. I can deal with nasty wankers - plenty of councillors fit this description. It's not even that they are liars, I deal with bullshit every day.
The reason why I hate newspaper managers is that they are lying cunts who think you do not KNOW that they are lying cunts.
Take my MD. To your face nice as pie. Behind your back snidey and sniping. So far so management arsehole.
But when he tells you that the newspaper you work for must make cuts to survive, ony to find out - three months and eight editorial redundancies down the line - that the paper is still making a healthy profit, albeit reduced from pre recession years, you are understandably angry.
Next we are told that cutting distribution will cut costs. Only by X per cent maximum you are told. Of course what they fail to tell you is that they had already cut distribution by X per cent so in reality you are XX papers down.
Who fields the calls? Certainy not the rat faced weasel who ordered the fucking thing!
Pagination must come down to save on printing. Fair enough you think until you realise its not just lost news pages at the back of the book but the cash hungry whores are changing the fundamental feel of the paper by selling everything that ain't nailed down. By this time, if it weren't for the copious amount of cheap grog you are necking, you are murderous in your rage for the short term attitude of the greatest bunch of newspaper murderers you have ever known.
Newspapers aren't dead - they are being slowly euthanised by the very companies that purport to care for the product.
Every cut in staff, every drop in promotion spend, every page lost or copy not delivered is slowly strangling the life out of newspapers.
It's not a public apathy that is killing the local paper - it is its own management's short termism to grab a few extra quid.
I am not advocating journalists running papers -for fuck's sake most of us can't run our own lives - but at least consult them.
We know what the readers - our customers, our advertisers - want and think. We live and breathe what we do. We ARE our newspapers.
Please stop systematically raping us you management cunts.

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