War declared: shots fired

I am a very happy bunny tonight.
The first salvo in the war against advertising has been launched.
A very large (expensive) advertisement came in after it's ad deadline and we sent it back.
Stick your money up your arse.
It was a very powerful statement from editorial backed by my ultimate boss. In the very recent past the ad would have got through with no more than a tugged forelock and a ticker tape parade. No more.
It not only felt great, but I honestly think I felt a groinal stirring.
Since I recently declared war on advertising to save our titles, a little bit of departmental snooping has uncovered a number of rather disturbing traits among our downtrodden hard-working, market-deprived advertising staff.
The worst is ad reps booking premium space without a paying client to back it up. They like to hold the space so that they can achieve targets later in the week with a cheaper deal to a preferred client.
Unfortunately this prevents other departments from booking real money deals for full money punters as the space is gone. And some of those departments, I learned, can and will sell the ads for four times the shite deals our main sales staff are getting
Joined up thinking or bullshit target hunting? You decide.
Other idiocies include free space for potential customers who want to gauge effectiveness of future ads.
Or ads just shy of a full page space which get bumped up to full size later because they know the surrounding edit space available is unusable.
Selling largish ads for £50 on page 3,5,7 just to make target.
Ad staff who have no idea about left and right premiums or offer editorial write-up as part of the 'package'.
The management in recent months have spent a long time prowling news departments looking for 'efficiency savings'.
In less than a week I have uncovered gross examples of idiotic selling that even the most retarded spastic would find hard to defend.
This comes from a newspaper group that has been whining about the economic downturn for the last two years.
Bleating about being forced to sell more of our better editorial space in order to save our doomed titles.
Bullshit.
I know for a fact my papers have hit budget every week in summer during the worst recession since the Lord Jesus Christ used to walk the Earth.
Everything done within our group in recent months has been to increase page yield so that an unchecked, increasingly lazy, and inefficient sales staff can make their budgets.
Fuck them. Make them work harder.
Do your job and sell something you useless twats.
Do I whine to them when my team have a quiet week? Do I fuck. I make them get more stories.
There is no cease fire in sight from this camp.
And I fucking love it.