With the clock counting down to Friday's deadline for accepting Star Tribune management's buy-out offer, Strib reporters will get a look at the big, new, glossy, reorganized reassignment chart top editors have been fussing over. Word is it will debut sometime today or tomorrow.
Actually, I don't know about the "big" or "glossy" parts, but it has struck some as odd that the paper's supposedly maniacally busy managers have enough disposable time to cook up a reorganization chart, with entirely new assignments for quite a few staffers ... BEFORE they have any idea who is actually going to be on their staff after next week.
It doesn't seem like an exactly efficient use of executive time.
Top editors Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie have been e-mailed questions about this, and I'll dutifully plug them in when and if they respond.
Until then the suspicion further souring the anxious atmosphere of the place is that the pre-buy-out reassignment chart is another not too subtle tool for pushing "targeted" employees off the company dime.
For example, if Employee "A" has never been one of your favorites, but you're getting the feeling he may linger, you re-assign him to the all-important Bloomington Planning Commission/graveyard of marginalized reporters. Employee "A" -- who may be a career-long screw up or just someone you've never particularly cared for -- sees the big, glossy chart getting pinned to the newsroom wall, trips over a half dozen corpse-like colleagues to search for his name, finds it inked in next to "Bloomington", says, "Screw this" and signs up for the buy-out.
Mission accomplished, if you're the diabolical manager.
This attrition technique has not exactly been invented by today's Strib managers. And it always has the dark beauty of keeping your fingerprints off an old-fashion whacking without cause.
Presumably the official explanation is that today or tomorrow's list is all for the service of the employees, offering them "guidance" and "clarity" as they make their decision.
Riight.
Whatever it is, another newer, bigger and glossier reassignment list will have to get whipped together after management gets a load of who actually takes the bait/hint and who doesn't.
Newspaper managers generally aren't too interested in getting rid of the career-long screw-ups unless they pose a serious danger. If they're safe -- usually too worn down or clueless to present risk -- they stay. Makes the higher-ups feel good when they can bully others or feel superior.
How pathetic is the Strib? Indeed how pathetic is the PiPress? Well, even though we are at ground zero, it is the LA Times that has the scoop that former Minnesota Attorney General Heffelfinger was potentially put on the firing list due to raising concerns over Mpls. and other off-reservation Native American voting rights. Apparently, then Secretary of State Kiffmeyer was pushing hard at possible WH direction to prevent them from using tribal ID cards and Heff's office objected. Her actions were ultimately blocked in court in November, 2004.
So, just to rub salt in the wound (like they care), who do you guess wrote the story? Why it would be L.A. Times staff writer Tom Hamburger of course! You know, the guy who was one of the top political reporters around these here parts, once employed by the Strib locally, then as Washington correspondent.....
Wait though! It gets even better since these were events that happened in 2004 and THAT'S THREE YEARS AGO FOLKS! So even now, our wonderfully competitive LOCAL papers can't unearth potential voter discrimination by LOCAL officials against LOCAL citizens and needs ex-local reporters employed by a west-coast paper to inform their "customers".
There are even more juicy tidbits there about Paulouse, about how they sought to keep it out of the papers of the time (no worrys, mate, just don't talk about it in a Maple Grove zoning board meeting), and read carefully about the how/why the story was caught now (i.e. Monica Goodling angle).
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-usatty31may31,0,321...
Suburban H.S. sports coverage indeed: mission accomplished. The prosecution, uh..... rests....
Tom Hamburger, a former Strib D.C. bureau reporter, finally does the digging his former paper has been incapable or unwilling of doing on the resignation of Tom Heffelfinger and how it fits into the overall picture of Karl Rove's politicization of U.S. Attorneys.
This story is the reason why the Strib and the PiPress need strong and well-staffed Washington D.C. bureaus now more than ever.
Sorry for posting this in comments, Brian. I didn't know how to get it to you.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-usatty31may31,0,352...
You have to give the Strib managers credit. This whole reorganization gambit allows them to bypass union layoff rules in making cuts.
Instead of cutting by seniority, which the Guild contract specifies, their method allows them to cut loose people without regard to seniority.
It's actually quite clever, and appears to have relegated the union to ineffectual pleading around the margins.
So: next year, the contract comes up for renewal. There are significantly fewer Guild members, and those left are in constant fear of more "reorganizations" or layoffs.
The union will be completely impotent. They could go on strike, and they'll get what the Northwest mechanics got: permanent replacements and no hope of ever getting their jobs back.
Or they could bend over and take whatever offer the company wants to ram their way.
My money is on scenario B.
what's wrong with encouraging a "career long screw up" to look at the buy out option?
gee, no, not insincere managers.
stop the presses.