Extra Helping of Squid: 3.24.14

Looking for Strange…Squid pressed tentacles firmly to Squid’s temples and began a slow massage. This could help relieve Squid’s anxiety at the latest news from the Monterey County Herald—not just the news itself, mind you, but also how it was delivered.

Just five weeks after Santa Cruz Sentinel opinion page editor Shanna McCord was tapped to replace the irreplaceable voice of ousted Editor Royal Calkins on the Herald’s opinion page, McCord announced she was bouncing to the greener pastures of flakdom—that’s Squid speak for “media relations”—at Graniterock. And that news prompted the Herald’s Santa Cruz Sentinel-based editor, Don Miller, to write one of the strangest editorials in recent memory. (Stranger than McCord’s suggestion that the AT&T Pro Am be moved to a different time of the year to avoid the rain? Yes, stranger than that.) Miller turned to the wisdom of the crowds to try to find McCord’s replacement—and punched her around a bit for abandoning ship so soon.

“In an awkward, to put it mildly, development, our newly minted Opinion page editor, Shanna McCord, recently received an offer she found too good to refuse…it was not exactly a happy conversation between the two of us when she told me she was leaving,” Miller wrote.

He went on to offer up a job description: “The editor I'm seeking has to be familiar with local issues and be comfortable representing The Herald at public events and in newsgathering settings. As a writer, the ideal editor needs to be able to summarize, clarify and argue a point, never demeaning the other side, but not backing down. They should enjoy blogging and reaching readers through social media as well.”

(They should also enjoy changing exactly one or two sentences in an editorial written for the Santa Cruz audience to make it appropriate for the Monterey audience. In just one recent example, the March 19 Sentinel editorial stated: “Without the strawberry, Santa Cruz County would look a whole lot different. Less sweet for sure.” The March 20 Herald piece: “Without the strawberry, Monterey County would look a whole lot different. Less sweet for sure.” Way to take a stand, Digi First Media!)

Monterey County Weekly Editor Mary Duan called Miller to find out how the crowdsourcing attempt at hiring went. After Miller asked her why the Weekly was so “endlessly fascinated with every move” at the Herald—and after she explained to him that lots of newspapers cover media, and the Weekly was one of them—he told her, with terseness Squid admires, “I think you can see how it went based on the comments left on the piece.”

And holy shnikies, he wasn’t kidding. One commenter suggested that McCord discovered she had walked into a bad situation and decided to get while the getting was good. Another suggested that he’s heard Calkins needs a job, and “say what you will about his politics,” but at least he knew how to run a newspaper. And still another opined as follows: “Let me guess...the pay: peanuts. Job security: nil, because there will be yet more ‘reorganizations’ coming” and ending with the zinger, “Hey, maybe somebody in India could do the job,” a reference to the outsourcing of all ad design to India by Herald parent Digital First Media.

Squid has an idea Squid wants to share. Instead of making his piece a job posting, maybe Miller should have made the call for a new opinion editor into a personals ad.

“Beleaguered Editor-in-Chief, forced into editing two papers instead of one for no additional pay, seeks fiery yet neutral mouthpiece to write opinion pieces for two newspapers about 50 miles apart for no additional pay. Gender irrelevant. Must like Pagrovian politics, walking in the fog, puppies and the Oxford comma…”

Squid would like to help Miller get started by posting a personals ad to find a replacement for veteran Herald investigative reporter Virginia Hennessey, who told friends and colleagues she too would be bouncing for greener pastures—Hennessey, a licensed private investigator, plans to go into business for herself. Her last day at the Herald will be March 28: “Beleaguered Editor-in-Chief seeks smart-as-a-whip investigative reporter. Must be familiar with the Brown Act, document hunting and domination through refusal to back down on any story…”

All of the moves come as the Herald is about to launch into a redesign, set to begin April 1. Squid only wishes all of this were an April Fool's joke, but in this case, truth is way stranger than fiction.