FlaglerLive.com
Daytona Beach News-Journal publisher Michael Redding has a deal for journalists and other staffers: Sell a three-month subscription to the paper and get a $25 bonus ($50 for a six-month subscription); sell $100 worth of advertising and get $50. Former News-Journal staffer Pierre Tristam writes: "Redding described the arrangement -- highly unusual in news-gathering operations, and forbidden, for ethical and journalistic reasons, in many -- as an 'incentive,' rather than a requirement: no expectations were set. But staffers have had no raises in four years and were promised none this year." || Publisher Redding responds to the story after the jump:

Dayton Beach News-Journal publisher Michael Redding reacts to the story, written by Pierre Tristam

Tristam is a former employee of the old News-Journal ownership. He is very bitter and has decided he wants to take it out on the new company. Unfortunately he and the few employees he is quoting completely missed the point, but 99% of the employees didn't. I never implied, or even suggested that anyone from our editorial team should lower any standard, nor would I. Our editor Pat Rice and our Opinion page editor were also in the meeting and they were surprised to hear anyone left with the impression the article suggests. On the contrary, I have received many compliments from the editorial team since the meeting.

Interestingly, the photo at the beginning of the story is not even from our newspaper (look closely at the faceplates on the top of the racks). The tone of the story indicates why he would use the random newspaper rack graveyard photo considering it didn’t even come from our company.

People who know me and the standards I support would reject the impression this story suggests.

Tristam responds:

Michael’s math is a bit off. Six of the six staffers I spoke with, out of the 60 who attended his pitch, characterized almost in the same terms the disgust and exasperation reflected in the story. It wouldn’t be the first time that publishers who get their news about their staffers from their top brass get a happy-meal version. The issue here, what made the story relevant, is ethics—for staffers and for journalism—and the corrosion of long-standing walls between sales and newsgathering. I don’t think Michael gets it, or understand his staffers’ reactions, which are the heart of the matter. What’s disturbing is that his top editors, ostensibly trained journalists, don’t get it either, or choose not to.

His reflexive reach for the bitterness bit is unsurprising but also misinformed. I was happy to volunteer for the last titanic layoff a year ago, ahead of Michael’s return (he’d been fired from the News-Journal some years before, when he was a classified ad manager: talk about bitter) and subsequently start FlaglerLive.com. Its rapid success, from zero to 5,000 readers a day in 10 months, naturally is a sore spot with Michael, since many of those readers migrated from the News-Journal while his numbers have been zooming in the other direction at twice the industry average since he took over. Of course I still mourn the demise of what had been a rare family-owned newspaper, where I spent 10 of my happiest years as a journalist, working with true journalists. But even the Jurassic had its end point.

I sent Michael a few questions about his pitch and its reception from staffers so he could respond.