In the world of the Internet, influence rises and falls in nanoseconds.
Just look at Howard Weaver, McClatchy's VP, News. He recently announced he would leave McClatchy by the end of the year.
Readers have already abandoned his blog, Etaoin Shrdlu, judging by the dearth of comments on recent posts. In months past, Howard's blog posts would generate dozens of passionate comments, sometimes more. Howard has continued posting since the announcement, just not as much.
Since the announcement, though, it looks like people have stopped reading. Or caring. His post from last week, "Links going mainstream", generated zero comments. His post from Thursday, Murder your darlings, also received zero comments. Now, if Howard wants to generate buzz all he has to do is go "Scott McClellan" and post a juicy tell-all about Gary Pruitt, or give the inside story about McClatchy's disastrous 2006 purchase of Knight-Ridder. If Howard did that he'd get a boat-load of hits and the fame would return.
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Until then, I'm betting Howard's blog will keep moving toward Internet Siberia.
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8 comments:
Who's this 'Weaver' guy you keep talking about?
Former Chief Ideologue and Vice President of News for the McSlime Co. The only executive to have left employ since cannibalization began.
Weaver got ticked off about six months ago when some MNI employees ganged up on him, accusing him of doing nothing to earn his $500,000 salary, and for the lack of leadership from Sacto. So he started editing his comments, refusing to post some of the more pointed or those with the most acrid dissent. I know this because I wrote some of these, then just gave up and stopped reading his blog.
7:26 heh
Howard spent a lot of time on his blog defending his deluxe hotel stay the time he went to tell the little people why they would be losing THEIR jobs. Sort of like the auto brass chartering jets to the bailout party.
He also had lots and lots of Q’s about Pru’s $800,000 bonus. I don’t think the employees knew the boys dumped their stocks long before the crash.
I enjoyed Howard’s ‘Burning bridge’ story. He just didn’t think to tell the faithful who the real bridge arsonist was. Mr. Weaver is still singing Gumbuya, but sadly for him, it has become a solo.
Weaver was such a loser he plagiarized the burning bridge story from Mark Pitts' blog. Potts wrote this two years ago:
http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2007/11/crossing-the-ch.html
Anonymous said...
Weaver was such a loser he plagiarized the burning bridge story.
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So, Howard is a jerk, and a plagiarizing jerk at that. Why doesn’t that surprise me? Too bad he is laughing at everyone all the way to the bank.
How many young journalists listened to his plagiarized story, and remarked about his compassion, his plan for the future of journalism, and his other contrived BS? No wonder some of the comments about him are so savage. He deserves it, and Pruitt is even worse.
You cannot argue the fact that while at the ADN, Weaver delivered the goods. His record as a McClatchy corporate officer is another story -- the Peter Principle at work. Under his nonleadership, newsroom staffs were whacked, newsholes were vaporized and, personally, I lost my job of 22 years. I found his blog to be generally boring, ditto for the two times I heard him speak at The KC Star. He played the corporate game too long, and ended his reign on a failing note.
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