I was back at work, part-time, at the Clarion Bugle, just a few hours a week. Yeah, I quit the paragraph game, but it's bourbon money. I settled into the groove of routine, as fast as a reporter copying and pasting a press release. Then rumors began circulating that the Bugle was getting a new owner.
Now, rumors in newsrooms remind you of the blockbuster story offered at the afternoon news meeting that turns out to be a brief in print. But this one seemed to have legs. Our new press baron was supposedly Chuck Gump, owner of a chain of funeral homes. (People said he made his fortune taking the pennies off dead men's eyes.) He'd run for mayor, state senator, and governor, never finishing with more than 3% of the votes in a primary. For an undertaker he was a flashy dresser, favoring striped suits and a homburg.
Hell, I thought, I used to work for Sam Zell; I can endure anything.
Well, the sale went through and a few days later the news staff was summoned to the big conference room to meet the great man. At the door to the room was a huge basket of lilies that carried the smell of death, and the walls had been decorated with inspirational quotations, several of them bogus, accompanied by odd misspellings (Albert Einstien?). We sat there and looked at each other blankly, like a copy desk wondering whether the city desk is ever going to move any copy.
Finally Gump strode in, wearing a three-piece suit with stripes as wide as a pica pole and a garish tie, carrying a sheaf of papers with our names, titles, and photos. I figured he wasn't accompanied by an HR flunky, so how bad could it be?
Then he barked at us from the front of the room: "The Bugle is going to be a different newspaper, and anybody that doesn't like that can get up and leave now."
The managing editor asked, "Do you mean that there are going to be changes in our editing and ethical standards?"
Gump said, "They will be my standards. No story will run more than 600 words, you'll be paid according to the number of clicks your stories get online, anybody who's dead to me is dead to you, sports and cops, that 's it."
The M.E. spoke up. "Well, our practice has always been--"
"You're fired. Get out."
The group gasped. The executive editor gazed into the distance and said nothing.
Gump pointed to the obituary writer and said, "You're fired too. If they can pay me to bury their loved ones, they can pay for a death notice."
Then he pointed to me. "Copy editing takes too much time and costs too much money for too little. Newspaper readers are so dim they couldn't spot a grammatical error if you sent up a flare. Take your green eyeshade and get out."
I lingered at the bar across the street and watched half the staff file out one by one, each carrying a cardboard box of personal belongings and office supplies. The publisher, too--at least he marched out rather than dismember the paper.
That was eight months ago. Today I see that the Bugle's remaining assets have been acquired by a private equity firm.
