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Topic: Memos Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 4/24/2003 6:31:06 PM
Title: St. Paul Pioneer Press cartoonist's farewell memo
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
[St. Paul Pioneer Press editorial cartoonist Kirk Anderson was laid off after eight years at the Knight Ridder paper.]

From: Anderson, Kirk
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2003 4:10 PM
To: All News
Subject: So long, thanks for everything

So long, everybody. Thanks for helping make it a great eight years.
Today is my last day. I just want to say I feel privileged & honored to have worked at this newspaper with y'all. It's been a great job, getting paid to piss on people's legs three times a week. I was honored to appear in the same pages as Ruben Rosario, Nick Coleman, Kirk Lyttle, David Hanners, etc. etc. etc. We have a lot of great talent, and I was privileged to be part of a great paper.

I must say a special thanks to my editors, Ron Clark and Steve Dornfeld. You allowed me the freedom to have my own voice, to say what I believed in. What a wunnerful rare opportunity, to be trusted with such a precious commodity. Thank you to the rest of my opinion page colleagues (even the ones whose opinions were always wrong), for all your help, support & companionship.

I'm an introverted little wallflower curled up under a drawing table in a dark corner of the seventh floor, and I wish I'd gotten to know many of you better. Because all the folks I've had the pleasure to work & chat with have been a lot of fun.

Getting canned sucks. But I understand that difficult business decisions must be made in difficult times, and I'm glad I'm not the one who has to make those difficult decisions. But if I was... I'd probably cut the private service that comes in to water and dust and turn the plants in the publisher's office, before I'd cut a local cartoonist. In other words, I'd cut something only the privileged few who enter the publisher's office see, before I'd cut something 190,000 readers see. Is the position of local cartoonist really valued
less than office plants? I could've watered 'em, and I don't even have a PhD in horticulture.

I hope seeing my rolling bloody head bobble down the stairs doesn't frighten anyone, I hope it just makes you cheesed off about the mess it leaves behind. I hope job cuts don't make anyone feel resigned to their fate and lucky merely to have a job; they should make us all fight harder for what we've got, and fight harder to build on it. Strong journalism doesn't come from frightened workers. Strong journalism comes from empowered employees who believe in themselves, in their mission, and who know that their company supports and cares about them and their mission too.

I know a few folks are nervous about guild activism. I know it's easy for me to talk, I've already lost my job. But I think about this the same way I thought about posting this e-mail: I don't want to live in a world where someone's money keeps me from talking openly. I won't live as if my silence can be bought. My principles do not have a price. I will say what I believe. Our profession believes in the freedom of speech more than any other; our industry prides itself on protecting the right to free speech. Let us follow in that honorable tradition and speak freely, speak often, speak loudly, speak, shout, sing, laugh, knowing it's not just what our gut calls us to do, it's what our business' highest principles of protecting free speech call us to do. Do it for Tony [Ridder]!

Our business demands openness of others, smells their dirty laundry and expects quotes on it. Were we not hypocrites, we would honorably hold ourselves to the same standard. Instead, when the media ask our publisher for facts about my departure, he responds with "No comment." When the media ask Tony Ridder about a quote of mine regarding his stewardship, he responds by trying to get
the article killed. I believe our company can do better. I believe our company can better reflect our public principles. I believe our company doesn't need to lower employee value to increase shareholder value. PEOPLE NOT PLANTS! PEOPLE NOT PLANTS!

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