Price of integrity in Athens:
Firings and resignations!!!
Nearly every professional journalist at the Athens News and Athens
Messenger, in the shadow of Ohio University, has either resigned or been fired
because management sided with a shady advertiser rather than protecting its
readers.
Adams Publish Group is the culprit. In Klamath County in Oregon at
the Herald and News APG lost its entire staff. Maybe APG stands for Appalling
Putrid Gutless.
The wealthy Adams family purchased the Athens newspapers in 2014 so
it didn’t take the ugly corporation long to destroy, dismantle and demoralize.
APG Media of Ohio president Mark Cohen declined comment. Look for
exodus from its 27 daily newspapers, more than 90 non-daily and more than 220
media-related products and associated websites in 20 states to be next to take
the burn-it-to-the-ground hit.
The Adams family – I can hear Lurch in the background in the TV
series based on Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoons even though they left one d
out of their Addams name – buys newspapers like trinkets. Integrity, morality
and superb media investigations are foreign to the Adams family, though.
They fired editor Corinne
Colbert for exposing companies claiming to sell high-value collectible coins
that ran ads in the Athens newspapers! Isn’t that the media’s job, to expose
frauds? Some readers who called Colbert said she never got the coins they
ordered but the frauds kept their money. Colbert complained to management,
which shrugged their shoulders and said they couldn’t do anything about the ads
(they own the damn papers, don’t they?).
So Colbert published an
article in the two newspapers explaining the ads to their readers. Two days
later, the axe fell on Colbert’s head and she was out of a job.
To paraphrase “The Addams Family” theme song:
They're creepy and
they're kooky
Mysterious and spooky
They're all together ooky
The Adams family
Strange
Deranged
The Adams family
You better hope the
Adams family doesn’t buy the newspaper in your town. It won’t be long before
you won’t have any respectable, moral and honest reporter and editor left.
Strange, deranged
indeed. Maybe they’re related to Trump or in business with him?
Just another
reminder that money and power corrupt.
No comments:
Post a Comment