Who's next?

Charmain, a secretarial-type assisant for our special events coordinator, got the pink slip today.

I don't know what to make of that. She was a part-time employee, so the move isn't going to save much money. What's even scarier is that she was plenty busy, so it wasn't like they were getting rid of deadweight or anything.

I guess I shouldn't worry about things I can't control. The only thing I can do is keep applying like crazy to other jobs.

No news is ________ news.

No big news today; Mr. Bernhard just wanted to sit in at our meeting and hear our story lists. They're really trying to shift our coverage of "hard news," or at least their very narrow definition of the term. Typically, that means news not found anywhere else -- even if that's because it wasn't a big enough deal to warrant coverage in competing publications. Needless to say, this is not the sort of thing that gets me excited -- and contradicts just about everything our editors have been telling us since we got here.

But if that's what they want, that's what I'll have to do. That sort of news is a lot easier to do, but is completely irrelevant in this market.

Dia dos Namorados

For those of you who don't know, today is Dia dos Namorados, or the Brazilian version of Valentines Day. and if you're dating a Brazilian, that pretty much makes it Valentines Day for you, too.

Closure?

Here's an excerpt from an e-mail everyone in the newsroom received this morning:

Wanted to let you know that Kent Bernhard plans to sit in on our staff
meeting tomorrow morning, via conference call.

I'd like to please ask that everyone make a special effort to get here
for a 9 a.m. sharp start time.

Kent is vice president for editorial forparent company American City Business Journals and almost never sits in on a newsroom-only meetings -- at least, he hasn't during my time here or at the Phoenix business journal.

Even if this doesn't mean layoffs or salary cuts, his presence augurs big changes for the job. On the bright side, at least we'll end the agonizing uncertainty. I'll keep you posted.

Damn dirty apes

Police hunt 'criminal' chimp
World domination always begins with a few minor burglaries.

Perhaps I was a bit too hasty...

It turns out the parking snafu was an adminstrative mistake brought on by our accounting system going down last week. It's fixed now, but that doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet. Stay tuned...

More photos

These are from our trip to Napa last weekend.