D-Day at the AJC
April 10, 2007 at 12:49 pm by Scott Freeman in NewsIt’s not a good day to be a reporter or editor at the AJC.
Word is the staff is on edge because the powers-that-be are going to inform the staff on Wednesday which jobs will be kept under the paper’s vast re-structuring plan. Staffers fear that those who management likes will keep their jobs, and the ones it doesn’t like will lose theirs.
What I’ve heard is that every person on staff will have to apply to keep his or her job, complete with résumé and a job interview.
If, for example, the AJC decides not to keep a reporter on the City Hall beat, the current person manning that beat can apply for open jobs. Everyone, I’m told, has had to prepare résumés (classes on résumé writing and job interviewing were provided).
Many will become what staffers disdainfully refer to as “mojos,” short for mobile journalists. They say mojo reporters will be given laptops and sent out into the field to file stream-of-consciousness blogs. And many fear there will be layoffs.
This is, shall we say, an interesting management technique.
As one person said, “I am sure the morale would be higher if they just shot people.”
A former AJCer e-mailed me yesterday: “I left also b/c of the BS. The paper’s thick layer of editors watered down heavy hitting stories so much it didn’t feel like journalism anymore.”
April 10th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
We are witnessing the unraveling of an institution, person by person.
With regard to those who indicated they would take early retirement, I got the following e-mail last Wednesday: “I have until Monday [meaning yesterday] to reconsider, but it is official after that.”