Tacoma News Tribune Layoffs and The Mob Outrage

Layoffs have been announced at the (Tacoma) News Tribune. The McClatchy-owned newspaper will outsource printing and inserting to other companies in the region. This move affects 67 positions within the News Tribune staff ranks. These layoffs are effective sometime in 2019. [Another holiday greeting from your corporate bosses.] The online version of the Tacoma News Tribune has published an article today about a very public brouhaha concerning a Tacoma woman’s ugly remarks made on Twitter. The public is outraged, the mob carries torches, a wagon follows with a vat of tar and a huge bag of feathers. There are calls for her employers to fire her (she is a distributor of homeopathic health products and has her own real estate business in Tacoma). Her name is now public information, as is her phone number and all other information she has supplied through online associations, LinkedIn, etc. It is certain that the phone number has now been disconnected. We checked, it is. After all the layoffs, in the offices yet occupied, those News Tribune reporters should know the difference between REAL NEWS and Social Media claptrap. Will they just close down the Tribune, lease the building out and shut off the lights? The majority of the public probably gets its news from online sources. Unfortunately, too many via Twitter and Facebook. And the News Tribune follows along. The public should be able to separate Social Media nonsense from what really matters, doing their due diligence to decide truth from fiction. The News Tribune has fallen due to the growth of the Internet, and is now swimming in the same dirty pool.