Don't Let the Door Hitcha

Despite the name of this gray box, Buzz is not always concerned with being what we in the journalism world call "timely." So, if you happen to have, say, a Dallas Morning News memo from earlier this year that we may find interesting, go ahead and slip it under our door, and perhaps...

Well, hey, lookee there, whadya know? Seems that the folks on the DMN advertising side have been just as busy "re-orging" (sounds dirty, huh?) as have the peeps on the edit side this year. To which we say, bully for them. About time someone at the Morning News took the idea of stockpiling cash seriously.

After meeting for months with an outside consulting group, News publisher Jim Moroney put out a memo that sought to change the "organizational structure" of the sales department. Since we're all about helping our brothers in journalism, we thought we would excerpt parts of that memo to help you, the layreader, better understand them.

Memo: "We removed layers of management between the SVP-Advertising and several managers...This change will help us make decisions more quickly." (Translation: "I just fired so many people. You got next?")

Memo: "Many of our managers and account executives will represent and sell our products to a limited number of categories of business, enabling us to become better subject matter experts in these fields." (Translation: "All ex-strippers, line up and draw a nightclub's name out of this hat.")

Memo: "Multimedia solutions will become the norm." (Translation: "People still think you can make money off the Internet. Let's milk this.")

Memo: "Just so everyone understands, this plan is our plan." (Translation: "We did exactly what the consultants told us to do. We paid them so much money, we had to.")

Memo: "We would encourage those who want to preserve the status quo to act now to voluntarily join another media company which celebrates the status quo." (Translation: Actually, that's pretty clear. It means, "My way or the highway, beeyotch.")