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- How Gannett Newspapers Got into This FixToday
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Or, we could subtitle this post, “the numbers at Gannett leak out, and they reinforce what Gannett veterans already knew.”
That is, Gannett never has owned newspapers. By its own preferred corporate-speak, it has owned “profit centers” — and the greedy bastards who ran the company were bold enough to call it just that.
A former long-time Gannett employee (as I am) named Jim Hopkins has created a blog at gannettblog.com that just has to be the single most painful piece of citizen journalism Gannett Co. Inc. ever has encountered.
Gannett apparently is going to conduct a huge round of layoffs this week, even as the company’s newspaper-by-newspaper profit margins, from 2007, were released on gannettblog.com last week.
First, check out some of these numbers. They don’t border on the obscene, they have crossed the frontier and taken up residence in the capital city of Outrageous Profit.
- Who Is That Bearded Man?Today
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That would be me, actually. Me with a beard.
The first I have ever had. Perhaps my last, as well. And I don’t know how long I will keep messing around with this.
I know some guys, a lot of them, are tinkering with facial hair most of their adult lives. Mustache, then a goatee, then a soul patch, then the whole shooting match. Then they start over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I had never done that. Five days without shaving was probably my personal record. I didn’t like that in-between stage, and I was fairly sure I would have some thin spots that would look silly.
So why now?
- USC (un)Officially Out of National Title ConsiderationNovember 29
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We knew from the moment USC lost at Oregon State, that the Trojans’ had a very hard road ahead of them — almost certainly an impassible road ahead of them — to get to the BCS title game. And we wrote that, the night of Sept. 25.
They had to win out and hope all but one team above them lost. And most of those teams had to lose twice because a one-loss team out of the pitiably weak Pac-10 wasn’t going to jump a one-loss team out of the Big 12 or SEC.
USC got some help. But not enough. And now it’s over, except for the voting.
Here’s why:
Alabama 36, Auburn 0 … Texas Tech 35, Baylor 28 … Florida 45, Florida State 14.
- Where Have All the Flowers (and Bugs) Gone?November 28
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Crowded out, everyone …
When will “they” ever learn?
(Everybody, sing!)
Or not.
One of the more interesting realities of Hong Kong: Very little seems to live on this stretch of the island aside from humans, their handful of pets … and some insects.
And that’s about it. Which leaves you to wonder where the rest of the flora and fauna might have gone. And it’s not hard to guess where.
- Finding Some Turkey in Hong KongNovember 27
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Here’s something else we, as Americans, rarely think about:
Nobody celebrates Thanksgiving except us.
And if you happen to be out of the country when Thanksgiving rolls around … good luck finding a turkey. Cooked, uncooked, still in its feathers. Non-Americans just don’t know Thanksgiving. “What? Colonists and Indians and … what?”
But it’s a big holiday, to Yanks. The favorite holiday of more than a few, because it involves eating and football but no gifts, and most everybody has four days off these days and, man, what’s not to like?
Which is long preamble to … how we patched together something that vaguely resembled Thanksgiving … in Hong Kong.