“Detroit Free Press staffer is ordered to attend a training session on the day she’s laid off,” MSM inside baseball site Jim Romensko.com reports:
A few weeks ago, the Detroit Free Press warned that three positions would be soon eliminated, including web producer. That was Andrea Farmer’s job.
Friday was layoffs day at the Gannett paper. It was also the last day of a weeklong series of metrics and marketing (aka PICASSO) training sessions for all staffers.
I asked if I had to go to the training, knowing my position would be cut,” says Farmer, a 35-year-old single mother. “‘You have to be there,’ they said.” So Farmer joined about 15 colleagues in the paper’s Stevie Wonder Room at 9 a.m. last Friday. The Gannett trainers told the Freep employees they were to make a marketing video that included some personal information and a plug for the newspaper.
Talk about burying the lede — the “Stevie Wonder Room?!” Tom Wolfe would be laughed out of the room if he put that detail into a satire of old media.
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