Tuesday, November 04, 2008

No limits now at the Raleigh N&O

The Raleigh N&O’s circulation and ad revenues are down and its parent McClatchy Company’s stock's crashed in the last 5 years from the mid-70s to below $3.00 while its bonds are now rated "junk."

All that may explain why the N&O’s Director of Newsroom Operations sent the following email to N&O staff yesterday:

From: "Susan Spring"
Date: November 3, 2008 11:46:07 AM EST
To: [Raleigh News & Observer staff]
Subject: Pizza etiquette

I want to remind you that pizza will be provided tomorrow night ONLY for
those working on elections. Please be polite. If you are working elections, you may have up to TWO slices. Thank you in advance for being considerate.

Susan Spring
Director of Newsroom Operations
The News & Observer
(919) 829-4860

Folks, if you’re thinking the email is just a cheesy joke I made up, you’re wrong.

Check Jim Romenesko at Poynter who reports Spring’s email was followed a few hours later by a message from Executive Editor John Drescher:

There will be no two-slice limit Tuesday night (although if Susan Spring chases you with a knife in her hand, you are on your own). And anyone who is here can partake.
That was nice of Drescher, especially the invitation to anyone at the newsroom to partake of the pizza.

I may drop by at dinnertime with the grandchildren.

But they’ll want to know if it’s just going to be cheese pizza or will there be toppings, too?

Romenesko needs to do a follow-up.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

John -

When they rated the NYT junk, my comment was, I always knew that paper was junk. Now the same can be said of the McClatchy papers: they're all junk.

Jack in Silver Spring

Anonymous said...

Hopefully, in four years, some of the more biased N&O editors and staff will be following the election results and eating pizza at home.