AP Spanks Reporter For Patently True Facebook Post
Richard Richtmyer is in trouble with his bosses at the Associated Press for something he wrote on Facebook. Did he burn a source? Trash a story subject? Worse: He mildly criticised one of AP’s hundreds of members.
Richtmyer made a head-slappingly obvious observation about the executives who turned AP member McClatchy Co. from a thriving newspaper chain into a sad penny stock (see chart, left). As quoted on Wired.com:
“It seems like the ones who orchestrated the whole mess should be losing their jobs or getting pushed into smaller quarters,” Richtmyer wrote on May 28. “But they aren’t.”
One of Richtmyer 51 “friends” at the paranoid, insular newswire ratted him out to management for saying this very true thing, and now he’s got an official reprimand for not constantly toadying up to every last AP member, no matter how vulgar. Meanwhile, Associated Press Chairman Dean Singleton continued yelling furiously (probably) that Google, one of AP’s most successful clients, is a terrible corporation run by demons intent on sapping his company’s precious bodily fluids. In this manner he modeled how one avoids expressing opinions that might compromise “AP’s reputation as an unbiased source of news.”
[Wired]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@Barret Lee Fisher: Yes, the archives are nonexistent and it's hard to find filler or stock art, but really ndhapple? the actual system is pretty frickin easy to use, quick, better than most journalism programs that are out there. Could it be better? Probably. But of the seven media companies I've worked for, it's the only piece of proprietary technology/software that is not ridiculously infuriating, circular and nonsensical.
@ndhapple: But it's such a terrific archiving system. Like I could possibly need to find a photo dating back further than two weeks. Anything that's newsworthy always happens in that amount of time. Who needs filler art, really?
Barret Lee Fisher
@alec_baldwin: before or after he saves the whale?
+ Watch video
ndhapple
Al Gore is going to save newspapers because, after all, he invented the Internets. When he's done with all that, he's going to save his two reporters.
And this is why people carefully screen people wanting to befriend them on Facebook.
badass-boi
@BooWahBabe: Yeah, but I think the most objectionable part is the co-worker who ratted him out. It's what hall monitors become when they grow up.
@hilikusopus: Actually, you perfected it. Better than my "Disassociated," your "Dissociated" is richer in meaning, a more standard form, and rhythmically identical to the original. Bravo, you.
Wonder what Denton would do if one of his minions dissed Gawker and company's biggest advertisers. Yep. Nuff said.
Later Singleton reminded his employees to be mindful of Google, saying, "You can't let them in here. They'll see everything. They'll see the big board!"
katekate is squared
What do we have to do to get "journalismism" into the dictionary?
@iplaudius: Go with Dissociated Press. Nicely done.
Yeah, the guy should have known better than to write it, but the person who reported him to management is an asshat. If your co-worker's FB status is questionable, then why not point it out directly to him that it could get him in trouble?
More importantly, are they ever going to get around to fixing the clusterfuck of an unusable mess that is 'AP Exchange'? Jesus christ it's terrible. Horrible.
AP is a wire service, don't bury the news and photo wires underneath a mess of confusing and nonsensical menus and search functions. What I would give to have "YourAP" or even AP-Leaf back.
ndhapple
So, the AP is just protecting its P.O.E.?
belltolls
Associated Pressure.
Disassociated Press.
OK, I’ll stop. Seriously, whoever passed the post along to management is a mondo asswipe.
@Valerie Flame: It's just the frustration that it always crashes in Safari and Firefox. And there is no archive. And they don't put the top stories on the wire front and center, you have to dig through menus to find them. What makes it even worse was YourAP was about 10 times easier to find and pull content from.
ndhapple
@belltolls: Ever notice how the Wall Street Journal is doing just fine? Maybe it's not the internet's fault. Maybe everyone's just sick of the liberal bullcrap that these papers keep pushing.
sciontc