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BONG Bull 682 paging Mr. Foley
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Charles Stough
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Oct 02, 2006 12:21 PDT
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The Burned-Out Newspapercreatures Guild's World-Famous Encyclical
BONG Bull
No. 682
Copyright © 2006 by BONG
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For Oct. 2, 2006. Page for the Hon. Mark Foley! Paging Congressman
Foley! Anybody seen Foley? asks the Burned-Out Newspapercreatures Guild,
and this is BONG Bull No. 682!
SURVIVING THE BUYOUT. At many U.S. newspapers there is good news, bad
news and worse news. The good news is that even if the publisher wails
about profits plummeting, it can still mean the outfit's netting 20
percent.
The bad news is that some senior journalists are getting early
payoffs and arm-twisted into retirement just when they're at their peaks
of expertise, experience and earnings, having sacrificed a lifetime for
the dear old font of knowledge. The worse news is for the guys who miss
the age cutoff by two weeks and have to stay at this dump.
So there's mixed advice when newsroom buyouts loom. Consider:
-- It's good news when you can keep the medical insurance. It's bad
news when it's the same slow-paying, penny-pinching, $288-a-week clerk
making medical decisions that the active-duty staff gets.
-- It's poor form to refer to your change of status as "going to
stud." There's little profit in demoralizing your colleagues staying
behind, even if it is fun.
-- To be sure of a place on the buyout list, make sure you noisily
volunteer for every newsroom project committee and then do nothing to
advance the mission. Unfortunately, this is also how to get made a
manager.
-- You may get the choice of taking the buyout or winning a promotion
to some airy title like "audience development editor." Does the term
bear trap mean anything to you?
-- Half your high school class got married (or not) and had kids
right away, struggling and sacrificing through their early years to see
the brats through college and pay down their mortgages. If you were
among the wiser, disciplined, career-planned ones who chose to wait and
pay off the boat, Bimmer and Bimini before starting families, bet you
and the tots think you're a proper boob now, huh?
-- If you take the buyout, you buy your own pens and pencils from now
on. If you don't take the buyout, stock up before some MBA in the
business office padlocks the cabinet.
-- Every time there was a newsroom cake party, you thought about what
you really wanted to do with that cake. Your retirement party is your
last chance.
-- Don't be remembered for the farewell speech. Be remembered as the
guy who was in the can when someone else made the speech.
-- You can't go until you reconcile your expense account. This is a
major reason so many sports writers die at their desks.
-- Be flattered if they ask you to write occasional op-ed columns or
book reviews. Be wary if they tell you to just leave them at the guard's
desk.
-- Retirement sounds real good when you think about wearing your
pajamas all day. If you work for Hearst, you may consider this item a
wash.
-- Full pay is better than half pay. But half pay plus a flack's pay
is even better.
MANIPULATING AT WILL. Naughty, naughty, you photo editors smart-erasing
those horseflies off the potato salad, cloning those smoke clouds,
deep-sixing that cola can and (Huh? Is this right? TV Guide really did
this? What were they thinking?) splicing Oprah to Ann-Margret. Only
CBS's flacks and Sen. Joe McCarthy can doctor photos. Taking the
moustache off the mayor's wife will only make a hames of your front
page. On the news side we don't do that.
Ah yes, but after we retire we can call ourselves an artist and go to
town with that software. So the Committee on Professional Standards and
Other Transgressions invites BONGers to see a nartwork that began life
as a hailstone shimmering in mid-air. Then, thanks to the miracles of
Microsoft and suspension of newsroom rules, it was transformed to art in
every lifted-pinky sense of the word. See the results here or at
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/copyboy@sbcglobal.net/album/576460762314262947/photo/294928803160851368/2
Yahoo's photo-sharing page has a deucedly complicated url. Contact
bongs-@yahoo.com for a poster-sized photo print of Hailstone Patches,
on a reasonable and businesslike basis. Come on, a little help with this
pension, guys, gee whiz. And yes, we mean nartwork.
MAKE A HAMES, HE SAID? Yes, it's an Irish expression meaning to bollix.
Bollix? Yes, like FUBAR. What, you don't know FUBAR? You mean you have
page designers in the same room with you every working moment and you
don't say "FUBAR" at least nine times every edition? Anyway, Worldwide
Words newsletter, http://www.worldwidewords.org/ explores usages of
international English from a British perspective. It's where words like
"rebarbative" get dissected. A very cool site.
As for hames, it apparently has to do with the rein hardware on draft
horses' collars. Install them upside-down and you're in a cock-up.
COMIX SECTION. The Further Adventures of Herman "Speed" Graphic, ace
photographer for the Chagrin Falls Commercial Scimitar, and his Faithful
Companion, Typo the Wonder Pig.
PANEL ONE: The Deft Duo review the morning prayer breakfast from the
ledge outside the photo lab, admiring the sunset, as Typo remarks,
"Don't worry, Boss! Features Editor Hyperba Lee's probation officer says
she has to be home by sunset, so we just have to wait a little longer to
be safe!"
PANEL TWO: Huddling in his trenchcoat, a deathbed gift from an
ancient mystic wire service executive editor on a fog-shrouded eastern
island, Speed observes, "It's not fair, Typo! All I did was point out
that Absentee Publisher Gimlet Peen's column was basically correct on
fomenting democracy and freedom, but he misspelled 'cattle prod.' "
PANEL THREE: Typo coaches, "Well, he and Hyperba believe that the
cause of liberty and justice sometimes requires wires to people's
testicles, Boss! If the lunch line had been a little faster, she
would've been distracted by the meat loaf!"
PANEL FOUR: Speed wonders, "And what was the former county parks
commissioner saying about how hard he fights terrorism, Typo? I never
saw him get that animated!"
Typo speculates, "Well, I think he saw a chance to get on Fox News's
highlights reel with a good tirade, Boss! And besides, while he was
throwing the anchovy canapes, I scored us this whole tray of cupcakes!
Would you care for chocolate, vanilla and butterscotch?"
BONG Bull is the product of Chief Copyboy Charley Stough in Dayton,
Ohio. E-mail bongs-@yahoo.com for any reason. Or what the hell, for
no reason.
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