Embracing The Asteroid

Thirty years ahead of the times...congrants.

True believers.......

or fanatics????

And a union leader who admits he "has qualms" 30 years later. That in itself is news.

When did Murdoch become such an admired figure around here? He appears to be a stereotypical Boston Brahmin, albeit with a little more business acumen. Beyond that, he reeks of the snobbery and general disdain for the Joe the plumbers of small-town America. Don't think he'd even want to shake hands with Joe.

So really, what is this all about? Is he admired here for what he's achieved? Or for who hates him? I don't think anyone here would have nice things to say about him if he owned the NYT. Do you?

I can only admire these kind of people.

Conrad Black, Rupert Murdoch, never never never.

I think Murdoch is peripheral to this story. The point is that for the sake of a minor principle, the paper put itself out of business rather than save at least some jobs, and severance packages for those who did get fired.

One can't help thinking, à la Caddyshack...

"*Be* the asteroid."

A children's crusade. Heroic and nonsensical all at the same time - I have to kind of admire it.

Falling on your sword for a principle makes you heroic.

Throwing 1100 others on your sword for a principle makes you Vlad the Impaler.

Falling on your sword for a principle makes you heroic.

Throwing 1100 others on your sword for a principle makes you Vlad the Impaler.

Touché.

And Kate comes up with another classic:

"Throwing 1100 others on your sword for a principle makes you Vlad the Impaler."

It's the same process that earned Conrad Black so many enemies in Canada; they buy a failing newspaper that nobody else wants and keep it operating by making some painful but necessary changes. They're also going to make some money! Gasp!
Those objecting vastly overestimate the quality of the product they're turning out, often the difference in journalistic standards (arf!)is imaginary.
And most of them get to keep their jobs, which they would have lost otherwise.

Adaptation beats extinction, everyday, all-day.

celebrates a suicide note.

You hit it in the bulls eye. Not one mention of the other 1100 employee's who lost their livlyhood.
Where probably traumatized . How many marrages ended or how it impacted their lives. What an ego this Weiner has .
It makes plain the saying :To cut your nose off to spite your face.

That's where collectivism get the collective ... into a collective grave.

"If I can't be certain of my job, then we can all lose our jobs."

Very magnanimous, very altruistic. Aren't all newsroom staffers equal. Where's Emanuel Kant? What a bunch of twits. I am happy that many of them had to find other careers, or better yet, no career.

That is a great example of the Leftism. We are all in this together ... well you are all out if this together too.

When you spread around, eventually there isn't enough to go around.

Obama is using this logic on the entire country. This will lead to a hostile takeover and it won't be at the hands of Rupert Murdoch, employer extraordinaire, it will be by hostiles extraordinaire.

Obama: "If I can't have a country where everyone is equal, then we won't have a country at all."

It's not a circular firing squad, it's a collective suicide belt. There was more than one trigger, but only one man had to hit it.

Hopefully the 1100 are happier in their new professions. The world is better off that one of them (at least) lost that avenue to spread his views under the guise of news reporting.

A newspaper ahead of its time.
I cannot wait for the rest of them to go out of business.

HAHAHA

Not so much Vlad the Impaler as Jim Jones. These people drunk the kool-aid.

The same dopes would cheerfully work for any of the Soros agit prop mills.

I have lived in Buffalo all my life. There are two things I'd like to point out regarding this story.

1. Politically, the Courier-Express used to be the Democrat-leaning paper, and the Buffalo News was the Republican one. Now, all the liberal squishes work for the News, making it just slightly to the left of where Pravda used to be.

2. Thanks to decades of Democrat rule, there are no jobs in Buffalo, and there weren't any in 1980, so those 1,100 workers that preferred to go on employment rather than work for Sauron Murdoch either left town or ended up memorizing the instructions for the french-fry cookers at McDonalds. Hooray for principles.

Idiots.

"I just want them to inform me. I want to know the who, what, when, where, and why behind things going on in my local community, whether it's crime or sports or elections or commerce or weather or Mrs. Johnson's cat getting rescued from a tree by firefighters. Deliver the facts in as unbiased a manner as possible – and stick to facts, not editorializing."

I thought this comment deserved a wider audience.

THAT is what I want from a newspaper or TV news organization,W-5, not unending editorializing.

This is the tragedy of Union shops,when they're no longer profitable,the mickey-mouse rules of the fantasy world of organized labour take precedent over the well-being of the employees.

Weren't many of you ideologically opposed to the auto sector bailouts by the US, Canadian, and Ontario governments?

Had you gotten your way, wouldn't that have essentially thrown up to 52,000 Canadian auto sector workers on your sword for a principle?

No, Davenport it wouldn't. We've been over this ground many times before. GM and Chrysler would have gone to zero, the bondholders and the shareholders get clobbered, the too-lavish pension plans get trimmed, and the unions get de-certified.

Then the assets are bought up by someone else and returned to production. Most of the laid off autoworkers would have been back to work after the dust settled, but without a union and under new management.

Bankruptcies are good. They de-lever industrial assets of failing businesses. Bankruptcies are the necessary risk side of capitalism. If there's real demand for the product, its production facilities get restarted under new management. If there's no real business case for its product, like this newspaper, then it's done. Murdoch offered to keep it going on his terms. And why not? He who pays the piper calls the tune. If these people were too stupid to keep their business alive under new management then they deserve to get flushed.

Now, have you actually got anything sensible to say?