Reply #4: I used to work for one of their newsrags... [View All]

[Rob H.]

...and I can tell you from personal experience (at least at the paper for which I worked) that they treat their lower-level employees like shit. Not that that has any bearing on their political leanings (or does it?), it just pissed me off that the publisher got a huge bonus every year while the frontline workers got jack squat.

The paper where I worked had also driven out a union about a year before I came on board, which does follow the Repub tradition of union-busting. It was an open secret that if you contacted a union rep to come and speak to you, you would be fired; regardless of your time on the job, regardless of your performance, contact a union rep and you'd be outta there. (The state where the paper is located is a "right-to-work" state, so they could've fired me at any time for any reason, anyway, if they'd felt like it.)

That said, the paper--okay, it was The Idaho Statesman, if you must know--endorsed Whistle-Ass for Pres, which comes as no surprise, given that Idaho is a Red state. The Friday after September 11, instead of a photo of the ruins of the WTC or the Pentagon, which would've been appropriate or at least understandable, they had a giant photo of Bush's head on the front page, looking as if he was about to cry. When the results of the recount in Florida were released and it was shown that under any scenario other than the one Gore picked, Gore would have won, it was buried on the inside pages of the paper under a headline something like, "Recount Shows Bush Would Still Have Won Florida."

So draw from those examples what you will. Sorry for the rant, btw--I worked for them for four years and even though I left them about 4 and a half years ago, the experience was so negative that not only will I never work for a newspaper again, I haven't bought a newspaper since!