A Gannett corporate trainer recorded an unusual cell phone video that we're unlikely to see.
It shows laid-off Detroit Free Press website news producer Andrea Farmer speaking honestly at a staff seminar she had to attend, national journalism blogger Jim Romenesko reports Monday afternoon.
Friday was layoffs day at the Gannett paper. It was also the last day of a week-long series of metrics and marketing . . . training sessions for all staffers.
“I asked if I had to go to the training, knowing my position would be cut,” says Farmer, a 35-year-old single mother. “‘You have to be there,’ they said.”So Farmer joined about 15 colleagues in the paper’s Stevie Wonder Room at 9 a.m. last Friday. The Gannett trainers told the Freep employees they were to make a marketing video that included some personal information and a plug for the newspaper. "We were supposed to reach out to the community and show that there’s a face behind the product.”
Farmer was one of the first to give her presentation, which was recorded on an iPhone by one of the trainers.
“I got up there, and said I was a web producer and that I thought I had brought a lot to the company.” She then added: “But apparently not, because I’m going to be laid off today. . . .
"I didn’t know what else to say. …I knew what I was going to do when I got up there. I didn’t mean for it to be disrespectful. I wanted to be honest.”
That honesty accelerated her departure, Farmer tells the blogger.
About two hours later, she met with the paper’s HR person and Free Press editor and publisher Paul Anger. Farmer expected to be told that her last day at the paper would be Dec. 20, but the boss surprised her.
“He said, ‘I heard about your training video. I think it’s in everybody’s best interest to make this your last day.' ”
While the newsroom employee's fate is unamusing, her dramatic last day brings to mind classic dialog written by Larry David for a 1991 "Seinfeld" episode. As his alter ego, George Costanza, is about to be fired for having sex with an office cleaning woman on his office desk, he says: "Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you I gotta plead ignorance on this thing."
Meanwhile, in real life, Vermont photographer Stephen Mease quips on Romenesko's Facebook page that the Freep's Stevie Wonder Room "is now known as the 'wonder if I still have a job?' room."
-- Alan Stamm
