Laid-Off Courant Columnist Plans To Sue
The former consumer columnist for the Hartford Courant says he plans to file a lawsuit against the paper after he lost his job in he says was a deliberate attempt to stifle criticism of advertisers.
The Hartford Courant says that George Gombossy‘s position was eliminated because “he just wasn’t interested in the direction we were going,” editor Naedine Hazell told The New York Times.
A few months ago, Mr. Gombossy said, he was called into a meeting with Courant executives. He had written columns about a Connecticut contracting company that was also a Courant advertiser. [SVP Jeff] Levine said that he had received a letter from the contractor about the columns, and asked Mr. Gombossy to meet with the company and to “be nice to them” because an advertising deal was at risk, Mr. Gombossy said.
“At that point, I told them I’m refusing and I said, ‘You’ve got to fire me if you insist on me doing that,’” Mr. Gombossy said. According to him, Mr. Levine then backpedaled on the demand to meet with the advertiser, but said that he could not write about a major advertiser unless it was cleared by Mr. Levine.
Ms. Hazell, who also attended the meeting, had a different recollection. “We said we wanted to go to more helpful news, and less gotcha news,” she said.
Gombossy was fired after a column critical of major advertiser Sleepy’s was, if you ask him, “killed,” and if you ask the paper, “held.”
Two things are certain: One, whether or not this was an actual case of firing a watchdog for biting the hand that fed it, this sort of thing can only become more common as newspapers become more desperate to retain the ad dollars they have.
Two, we are so sick of the phrase “gotcha media” we could just puke.
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