-By Warner Todd Huston
It will be a merry Christmas for one of two reporters at the Kansas City Star. One of them will get to keep her job. The other? Welcome to Obama’s unemployment line. But there’s a twist. The KC Star has told both reporters to decide between the two of them who will stay and who will go.
The Star apparently told reporters, Karen Dillon and Dawn Borman that only one will still be employed into the new year. Management further informed the scribblers that they’d have to decide between them which will get the ax. Looks like it will be Christmas to the tune of Should I Stay Or Should I Go, by The Clash at the paper.
Dillion corroborated the unique personnel management technique but refused further comment. For her part, Borman completely refused to talk about her plight to her brethren in the media and it looks like she is the one hitting the bricks.
Mi-Ai Parrish, president and publisher of the Kansas City Star affirmed that the paper intended to fire 17 more staffers as the year winds down. This is the third round of layoffs since 2011.
Parrish issued a statement saying,
“These are always difficult decisions, so we will on occasion allow employees to volunteer for a severance package when we are reducing in areas where there are two or more of the same types of positions,” Parrish said.
She added that if an employee in a group does not volunteer, “then the person with the least amount of tenure is included in the severance program.”
The Star is facing condemnation from across the board for demanding that the employees do the work of management concerning the firings. “Every action has a reaction,” said Bob Kelleher, CEO of The Employee Engagement Group.
And what could that “reaction” be? One would think that the remaining employees just might feel they are working in a hostile workplace, eh?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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