At least it's something*

Employees at the Hartford Courant, owned by the bankrkupt Tribune Co., received $15 gift cards to a local cafe, Romenesko reports. Staffer at the Greensboro News & Record got cards worth $50.

Better than nothing, right?

Since I've never received a bonus check, my view of these things might be skewed.

*Update: Employees at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which got a lot of attention for its coverage of the BP oil spill and the resurgent Saints football team, got holiday bonuses roughly equivalent to the amount lost because of this year's unpaid furloughs. However, two weeks of forced furlough time is scheduled for next year.

Four in the morning

1. Another consequence of cutbacks at newspapers: Fewer papers are spending the time and money to fight for public access to court trials. The story mentions the Riverside Press-Enterprise, which helped set the standard for access to court trials in a pair of cases in the 1980s. NYT

2. One company - and I know there are others - thinks jargon and misdirection are the new news. From the NYT:

...the suburban newspaper is at the vanguard of the industry: reporters at The Journal News don’t work in a newsroom, they are part of an “Information Center”; they don’t cover beats, they cover “topics”; and in a new wrinkle to an old story, the staff was not being laid off, but becoming part of a “comprehensive restructuring plan."

Apparently, you no longer need to leave the newspaper to work in PR. NYT

3. Hard-hitting journalism is expensive: A jury awarded a doctor who was the subject of several articles in the St. Petersburg Times $10 million in a libel lawsuit. Even if the paper wins on appeal, the lawyers have to be paid. St. Petersburg Times

4. The Hartford Courant had some trouble managing both aggregation and attribution - it was taking stories from other papers posted to its website and then putting them in the newspaper under a Courant byline. Courant

Don't let the bedbugs bite

The Hartford Courant allegedly fired consumer affairs columnist George Gombossy for writing a critical column about one of the paper's major advertisers.

From the Consumerist:

The last column, which the paper refused to run, is about a Connecticut Attorney General investigation into mattress emporium Sleepy's. The chain is accused of selling used mattresses as new, and—even worse—selling used mattresses infested with bedbugs as new. Ew.

Gombossy said he plans to continue his column as an independent blogger.

(via Romenesko)

Get old, get out

Roger Catlin at the Hartford Courant is honored to have stuck around long enough to be asked to leave.