Topix Web Site Being Investigated.

[bobbbiez]

Geez, I hope none of you posted on Topix lately cause the DA's office is gonna have your addresses if you posted comments concerning OD Publisher Donna Donovan and Mayor Roefaro.

Guess there were death threats on Topix made against the two, so the Da's office will be doing some extensive investigating of posters.

I ain't guilty. I think that site sucks! ;D

[Clipper]

I read there on boring days. I seldom if ever post there. It is a free for all mess, and really should be shut down. Very seldom do I find any relevant, positive, or useful information there, other than to find a critique of a restaurant or something like that occasionally.

I can't believe that anyone would make a serious threat against either of those two idiots. Arrogance and ignorance have yet to be declared a crime, much less a crime that warrants a death threat.

Roefaro has already pretty much committed political suicide through his lack of leadership and Donna Donovan is simply a biased and self serving pain in the ass of the OD's daily readers. No major crime there either. Heck, they both fuel some interesting, heated, and lively discussion. LOL

[Swimmy]

This makes for very good headlines. But it took a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals court to order topix to comply with information subpoenas in the south west for a civil libel suit. You really think the da is going to seriously challenge topix to the 2nd Circuit just to get investigative information? The expense of going through that much litigation JUST TO GET THE NAMES OF THE DEFENDANTS, not to mention actually litigating the actual merits of the case. The case in the southwest was an extreme situation. The rest of the time, the damages don't hold enough money to warrant the expense of suing, hence why topix has gotten away with such unregulated posting on its forums.

I'm sure the only reason this came to light is because donna d is hurt that people really don't like her. And rather than hire her own attorney, why not have the taxpayers pay for it for her? Same goes for the mayor.

[Clipper]

Geez Swimmy, do ya think there are people on topix that dislike her as much as some of us here on Clippers Corner do? I would not threaten her with death. I simply am a disgruntled former employee that was screwed on his pay, that found the true DD to be a hypocritical, tyranical, menopausal pain in the ass, with little integrity or desire to benefit the area by providing honest and unbiased news coverage of any issue that doesn't fit into her personal scope of what is important.

I would wish her no ill in this life. I only wish her good luck in the next and hope she burns in hell for her abuse and disregard for those that surround her at the OD.

Her pompous ass can simply dump a dedicated and capable employee on a whim, with no warning. On more than one occasion our circulation manager would come back from a staff meeting and inform us department heads that someone had been terminated without warning at the morning staff meeting due to Donna having a fart caught crosswise, or the fired individual attempting to dispute her ultimate wisdom. I simply got fed up and quit, and didn't stick around to allow her to affect my spotless work record with her foolishness and arrogance.

How did YOU become such a fan Swimmy? You seem to hold her in the same "high regard" that I do. LOL

[Swimmy]

I call it the observer disgrace for a reason. Here is a perfect opportunity to do what concerned citizens and strikeslip do on a daily basis and she prefers to sweep anything that threatens her financial way of life under the proverbial rug. Dirty donna has wasted that perfect opportunity in preference for financial gain and influence. It's no coincidence that the paper editor's son got a slap on the wrist for his dwi flee the scene accident when anyone else would have the book thrown at them...

She has two standards that conflict so horribly its sad. And she is dumb enough to think that the general population is too stupid to figure it out. I'd go into further depth, but I think I've made my point.

[Clipper]

You sum it up in few words and hit it right on the head Swimmy.

[dgriffin]

OK, I'll be sniggety.

I still can't imagine what you guys think a newspaper is. If ya think it's a bastion of free speech, you've been reading too much of their self-serving PR.

It's a business, and if it's primary ... maybe sole .. activity isn't to make money, they wouldn't have any investors or bankers. And they wouldn't be in business. I know editorial matter is supposed to be independent of the business office... in the movies. Editors who truly believe that are working for small journals that preach to the extremes of society and sell maybe a thousand copies of each issue. Like the Alabama Das Kampf Quarterly.

I'll let someone more familiar with local Utica issues figure out how that translates into the printed matter you see below their masthead. But for sure, anything that disturbs revenue and profit isn't going to get much ink.

Anyway .... thanks for inspiring me to finish this piece I started the last time the topic of the OD came up. And I'm not insulting anyone, just observing. After all, I frequent the same barber shop.


Newsprint

I have this theory about newspapers. If the only paper in town disappeared overnight, few people under 50 would notice. And that’s been true since I was a kid, a very long time ago. While it's true I have a theory on just about everything, I base this opinion on a short but successful career in the news business. No, I wasn’t a publisher or editor or reporter. Compared to those positions, mine was much more intellectually stimulating and educational, situated as it was where the theoretical met the practical, where the rubber met the road. I was a newspaper boy.

In the 1950’s, I trudged the sidewalks and back hallways of Cornhill, witnessing what my customers were reading and discussing. Of course, what Mrs. Baldino was cooking for supper and whether young Mrs. Feffer often had a male visitor in the middle of the afternoon interested me less than who was a good tipper. But I was also intrigued by their lack of interest in the column after column of news copy carried in each issue. It seemed odd to me they would purchase the paper each day and read so little of it. Most of the readership in my part of the city read the ads and the TV pages and little else. Had I made a list of the Ten Most Important People In The News, as my customers saw them, Jackie Gleason would have been at the top and President Eisenhower at the bottom. The local mayor and the Common Council would have been right down there with Ike, if a customer even cared about local politics.

There were at least a few real news fans, of course. Down at the corner on James Street, a group of old men often congregated in Pete's barber shop, none of them with enough hair to be very good customers. They were the equivalent of today's Internet Forum. Knowledgeably arguing the issues of the day and complaining about the "goddammed newspaper," they assumed that everyone in the entire city was tuned in and debating all of the issues they believed the newspaper was burying or portraying in an unfair light. They appeared unaware that hardly anyone cared but themselves.

At least one person knew that nobody cared, and you could often see the disappointment written on his face. Ed Wentworth, editor of The Herald at the time, must have felt like his dream of journalism had failed him. He reported the issues, took his time to think out his positions, argued them through his chain of command and in general did a yeoman's job of news reporting and comment.

But he knew, as did the paper's business manger, that most of the readership out there beyond the Herald’s boardroom was more interested in Ralph Cramden and The Honeymooners than they were in the so-called hard news. And outside of Ed's office, the entire Herald organization … whether they knew it or not … was aimed at making a profit for the owners, from the guys who hustled the 4 foot rolls of newsprint into the cellar below the presses, to the kids hired cheaply out of Journalism School to write hard hitting stories about such weighty matters as animal shelter funding and traffic stops.

Part of Ed’s job as editor was to deal with readers like the gentlemen who hung out at Pete’s, which Ed thought of as the only barbershop in America with its own foreign policy. Letters to the Editor expressing outrage and implying thousands of angry readers always brought a smile to Ed. He knew the real number would be less than a hundred. Charges of being on the side of the enemy in any controversy would cause him to stop and wonder which side indeed was the enemy, or even if there was an enemy. The Herald saw only customers … never enemies or fellow travelers, pinkos, cohorts, deadheads, liberals or conservatives. Just folks who handed over a dime for the newspaper.

Ed and his staff liked being newspapermen and women. And he realized that to continue to be such, the paper first and foremost had to sell advertising to businesses who wanted to peddle their products to the readers. One look at the ads would tell you everything about the Herald’s audience. Few of them were under 50, unless the town had an unusually high number of young people interested dry cleaning and rupture support appliances.

When he thought of it in his low moments, Ed considered that although a newspaper was a wonderful dream of democracy, in reality it was no more than the cheapest entertainment in town. And it didn’t take much brains or money to become a valued customer.

David Griffin copyright 2010


www.windsweptpress.com/essays.htm

[Clipper]

Having worked at the newspaper Dave, I fully understand your points about her having to put profitability first. It is not that point that bothers me with DD. The part that bothers me most is her bias and the direction in which it leads the news. Every newspaper is biased in one direction or another, but it is the publisher that determines in which direction that bias will lean.

The OD is a UTICA based newspaper, and THE hometown paper in the area. DD is biased in favor of reporting only what she deems important and newsworthy to her elitist friends from New Hartford, and to those in political positions that she has sucked up to, and supported in their misguided political debacles. She seems to look upon Utica as only a cash cow and not a town worth representing with a positive spin on most days.

Donna would be better suited for a job at a bigger paper as a Society page editor, rather than a publisher. Her misguided feelings of superiority would be more at home there.

[Clipper]

I understand your love for the OD and it's staff Dave with your father's longtime affiliation with the paper. Unfortunately it is NOT the same wonderful place it was back then with the press room staff, reporters, and photographers. The entire atmosphere of being a "local" paper went away with lead type and corporate ownership. The sweat of people like your dad made the OD what it is today, but the corporate way of doing business required people like me, hard working, down in the trenches lower management and workforce to shoulder the financial burden of cutting budget and accepting lower pay in the name of profitability, while Donna, and other elite corporate groomed sub species continue to travel to corporate functions, drive company cars, sip wine over lunch on their company expense accounts and stay in posh hotels several days out of the month, while holding out on giving delivery contractors enough of a fuel surcharge to make their middle of the night deliveries even minimally profitable.

It is not the OD that your dad worked for and Donna is not the publisher that held the reins in the 50's and 60's, when people were happy and proud to work there. To be a fly on the wall of the second floor lunch room would be to know the reality of the morale at the OD of today.

[dgriffin]

You were on the ground there, Clip, so I accept your judgment. My article is meant to make a general point. And I wasn't thinking of Donavan, of course. In the 1950's she wasn't around. Actually, I was thinking of the editor I remember at that time, although I have no real idea of his thoughts. His son, who later had the same job, went to school with us. He and I were quite the creative storytellers in seventh grade, as I remember. Difference between us was he didn't believe what he made up.

On a number of Internet forums, where anyone can say anything they want and not have to meet a deadline or a payroll, I sometimes hear a note of the impractical when it comes to expectations of the local newspaper. I sometimes hear that here, too, of course. But I certainly don't think any newspaper management a group of angels.

I'm not apologizing for the OD. That would make no more sense than apologizing for Verizon or any other business.

I would expect the only difference between the OD in the 50's and today would be largely in one's imagination. They were profit driven then, too. And going even farther back to when my father first began working for them, they were essentially pariahs to any working man. Although they were in the company of many other businesses back then, I suppose.

[Clipper]

I would differ with your observation of the OD in the 50's compared to the OD of today in regard to being profit driven. According to my dad's friend, whom you knew, the paper back in those days held the help in high regard and only wanted to get a basic 8 hours work for 8 hours pay. Deadlines, stress and suspense is ever present in any news outlet. The difference is that today's newspaper expects TWELVE hours work for 8 hours pay, and actually DEMANDS it rather than simply expecting it.

I would imagine that falling profitability drove the sale to a corporate entity. I would imagine that increased production costs, and competition with other forms of media coverage, made it an absolute necessity to go corporate or shut the doors.

I am sure that with the limited profits in the newspaper business today, there could be no benefit package or company paid insurance plans and the like without corporate ownership. I am sure that the OD would have closed the doors long ago if they, as a singular entity, had to replace the printing press or install all the latest technological advances that allow the making of the plates and equipment to insert the advertising circulars and flyers.

Unfortunately I sadly fear that we are looking at the last vintages of printed news. I fear that in a very few years, all news will be electronically transmitted and/or provided only on TV and radio.

You can already simply flip open your blackberry, and read the E edition of the newspaper on your cell phone or live stream the news from the web via your phone.

The bundle delivery men tossing bundles into the doorways of businesses, and your carrier traipsing through the snow to put your paper on the porch will soon be going the way of the dinosaurs and steam trains. Sad in passing, and leaving behind a legacy and history of hard working people busting their butt so you could open the paper and read the latest news over your morning coffee, or in your chair after supper in the days when Utica had the Daily Press in the morning and the OD in the afternoon.

While DD dampened my enthusiasm with her management practices and her screwing with my pay, I DID enjoy the newspaper business. It was a hustle bustle life that gets into your blood. It became a personal challenge to insure delivery before 10 AM or so, even if the press broke down and the papers weren't available for delivery until 7 AM or so, rather than midnight or 1AM. We were supposed to work from 10 PM until 7 AM. but many mornings we staggered home exhausted at noon, but satisfied that we had provided a very important service to people by getting their newspaper to them under less than ideal circumstances.

[Swimmy]

Dave, I certainly understand that the business of the paper is to sell papers. But there is something severely wrong when a paper will purposely misrepresent facts of a story to pigeon hole the story into the editor's personal agenda, despite facts being as obvious as 1+1=10 (binary ). For example, with the Oneida Indian Nation, for years, the od and the local politicians attempted to claim that the land-trust application was a deliberate attempt to circumvent a US Supreme Court decision (and if you're townsend, you still do). No one at the paper cared that the 2005 decision being circumvented proposed the land-trust application route, and declared it the proper avenue for the Oneidas to be able to re-exert their sovereign control over those lands. For two years, I wrote to the reporters, and I wrote to dirty donna. All of them ignored me. I finally wrote a letter to the editor that took three months to publish (whether for scheduling purposes or otherwise), long after the issue faded from the public's attention. Shortly thereafter, though, the paper FINALLY dropped that bullshit. Because I would write on their forum and eventually here. I would quote that paragraph every time the paper was stupid enough to insist otherwise. It only took 3 years to correct that garbage.

Then there is her stance on dwi arrests and publicly humiliating them on the front page. It took at least a week before the paper published the story about her own son. And when she finally ok-ed that article, it was buried in the local section, not the front page news. All the other media outlets, including Syracuse, covered that story before the od finally acknowledged it.

Then there is all the stuff left out of the OD concerning new hartford. It's only now that she can't hide the fact the state comptroller's office is involved and the AG is considering an investigation that we are seeing a less biased and conveniently overlooked inconvenient facts being put into their articles. And why? Look where her husband is. You should see some of the behind-the-scenes e-mails I'm cc-ed on because I helped take up a cause or three. Before this past year, not even 1% would make the paper. But we know all about Utica's dirty laundry. Why is that?

She can still successfully sell papers without the blatant disregard for the truth.

[dgriffin]

Clipper, I'll take your word on the specter of the OD being as bad today as they were in the 1930's when, according my father, they paid the pressmen each week what they thought they could get away with, pleading poverty and practically inviting unionization, which was not easy to accomplish then.

I'm sure the State would like to hear of unpaid hours for non-exempt employees, and even for so-called management if they are managers in name only. I was on a grand jury that indicted a business owner for an unrelated charge, but it came about when his employees complained he was not paying them for time worked. And I knew guy who obtained a cash settlement through the State from a former employer who tried to get away with making him work hours for free because they told him he was a manager. There are criteria for what constitutes an exempt worker.

[Clipper]

Well all of my departmental employees were paid for their extra hours, and I was to be compensated with comp time, but there never came a convenient time when I could take the time off for one reason or another.

Even today, ONLY the pressmen are covered by a union contract. The rest of the employees are at the mercy of the company. We had a good benefit package under Gannet but I would have to wonder if it changed with Gatehouse.

I finally just decided it was easier to quit and take a job for 1 1/2 times the pay, and sit in a brand new warm truck, while cruising leisurely back and forth to the midwest, rather than to freeze my ass off standing on a loading dock waiting for them to fix the antiquated broken down press so that my drivers could deliver the paper. By taking the driving job I got a full nights sleep every night, and was home from Friday afternoon until Sunday night or Monday morning every week. I went from $900 gross salary, to an average of $1300 net pay a week for less work and better conditions.

The newspaper business is an interesting job, but NOBODY will ever get rich working their butt off for the pay that is available in most newspaper jobs in today's world. Being a department manager for a newspaper is stictly a title, and it simply means that you wear a dress shirt and take crap from both directions, both up AND down for little pay.

[bobbbiez]

Jan 6, 2010 14:52:08 GMT -5 Swimmy said:

This makes for very good headlines. But it took a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals court to order topix to comply with information subpoenas in the south west for a civil libel suit. You really think the da is going to seriously challenge topix to the 2nd Circuit just to get investigative information? The expense of going through that much litigation JUST TO GET THE NAMES OF THE DEFENDANTS, not to mention actually litigating the actual merits of the case. The case in the southwest was an extreme situation. The rest of the time, the damages don't hold enough money to warrant the expense of suing, hence why topix has gotten away with such unregulated posting on its forums.

I'm sure the only reason this came to light is because donna d is hurt that people really don't like her. And rather than hire her own attorney, why not have the taxpayers pay for it for her? Same goes for the mayor.

Swimmy, is there a difference between the DA's office investigating these death threats on Topix to the recent letter in question sent by one of our legislators? With both, the taxpayer has to foot the bill.

Honestly, not defending the OD or anyone who works there or the Mayor, I feel a death threat is not something to be taken lightly, especially with all the nuts in this world today. It sure as hell is far more important then the letter by the legislator being investigated.