Indy Coverage of NLRB
Matt Kettman from The Independent did some fairly live blogging on the NLRB hearing today...waiting for the second installment which should be up soon. He did a great job.
Update: The second story has been posted and includes a bit about Travis Armstrong supposedly being stalked by a union organizer -- is that what is behind the editorials which invoke Jimmy Hoffa? I wish he would have said so...we might have understood where he was coming from. For Marty Keegan's part -- he denies doing so and why would we have any reason to not believe him?
The part about the unfortunate comment on BlogaBarbara should be part of the continuance of the hearing tomorrow. I hope the judge can ascertain some understanding about first -- the difference between a post and a comment; and second, how blogs work; and finally, the huge difference between sending a press release out to thousands of media outlets and a small comment on a blog that was up for a couple of hours only during the day. Why would any of the potentially organized have viewed this at work unless it was their job? News-Press management has never contacted me directly about this issue and I wish they had in the sense that I could have explained that I believe very much that what that person did was wrong. I, however, have no way of knowing who it was...it could have been friend or foe for all I know.
Update: The second story has been posted and includes a bit about Travis Armstrong supposedly being stalked by a union organizer -- is that what is behind the editorials which invoke Jimmy Hoffa? I wish he would have said so...we might have understood where he was coming from. For Marty Keegan's part -- he denies doing so and why would we have any reason to not believe him?
The part about the unfortunate comment on BlogaBarbara should be part of the continuance of the hearing tomorrow. I hope the judge can ascertain some understanding about first -- the difference between a post and a comment; and second, how blogs work; and finally, the huge difference between sending a press release out to thousands of media outlets and a small comment on a blog that was up for a couple of hours only during the day. Why would any of the potentially organized have viewed this at work unless it was their job? News-Press management has never contacted me directly about this issue and I wish they had in the sense that I could have explained that I believe very much that what that person did was wrong. I, however, have no way of knowing who it was...it could have been friend or foe for all I know.
posted by Sara De la Guerra | 1/09/2007 08:36:00 PM
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12 Comments:
Lots of interesting stuff there about Scott Steepleton, the mysteriously low-profile top editor since the Mess.
He comes off as both arrogant and insecure, clearly unprepared to manage the newsroom during the chaos of the past few months. His writings are likewise unimpressive. I'd be interested in finding out more about the alleged dishonesty that precipitated his firing from the Los Angeles Times - dishonesty and opportunism seem to be themes here.
I'm amused by his description of BlogaBarbara as just a web site that takes cheap shots at the News-Press. That's part of the equation, of course, but not the only thing.
It's time for someone to pull the mask off this cipher and tell Santa Barbara what makes him tick.
Keegan of the Teamsters has been featured prominantly, in photos and video, at the Independent web site and several video productions of events shown on Santa Barbara Channels 17, community access TV.
Yikes! We all know Travisty and Nelville watch and read those sources thoroughly. So then what should any reasonable person conclude when Travis Armstrong says in open court that he never knew what Keegan looks like until the day of the hearing yesterday?
Can anyone think of another reason why Travisty would not be thinking and seeing clearly in the middle of the night last summer, when the alleged stalker was out on the sidewalk? His tourist and party heavy neighborhood has a lot of interesting people out on the street during the middle of the summer nights.
Street Theater indeed!
Sounds like the News-Press management has no case at all, just paranoid claims. Marching and swearing? Other claims not backed up by fact? The N-P lawyers dropped the ball on this one, if they had a ball in the first place, that is.
Well, it's going to get very interesting today if Wendy and/or Nipper take the stand. I await the reports with baited breath!
This is a cool blog... but you may want to change the title to....." Santa Barbara NewsPress Politics, Media & Culture. Ironically, the newspress isn't the only news in SB. Other then being a local company that puts out a daily product for 50 cents...the paper is of no news value to me. I read the paper everyday.. the quality is the same now as it was 5 years ago... if it wasn't for this latest uproar.. i would have never noticed a difference...i feel bad for the staff, but honestly, the end product hardly changed!
If all it takes to invalidate a unionization vote is an anonymous threat in a comment on a blog, then we would expect corporations all across America to be posting such threats -- which, for all we know, is what happened in this case.
Also, in court, on the stand, under oath, Scott Steepleton described BlogaBarbara as a "local website that essentially pokes fun at the Santa Barbara News-Press" -- one more example of the sort of dishonesty that probably resulted in his being fired by the L.A. Times. But hey, their loss was Wendy's gain.
Anon 9:57's post is character assassination, pure and simple. Unless there exists clear evidence, I don't see how anyone can condone such reckless and completely unfair accusations about someone else's character. Shame.
New reader here. Can someone explain to me what the comment in question was?
Carson -- so what about Melinda Burns, accused by Steepleton and the gang recklessly and vengefully of "bias" in the face of 21 years of evidence (and hundreds upon hundreds of loyal readers) to the contrary. What kind of character does that reveal? No, if Steepleton's character was assasinated, it was by his own hand long ago. Some people will do anything for a buck.
By all accounts, the NLRB hearing may already have been settled in favor of the organized newsroom employees if not for a single threat posted on this blog four months ago.
Sara, you owe it to the newsroom employees as well as justice in general to reveal the identity of the poster, as well as that of Nelville Flynn (Nipper denied under oath that he is Flynn), as well as your own identity, which also was an issue in today's hearing.
What are you waiting for, Sara? The truth will set you free!
I don't agree as there are rather obvious reasons to not reveal my identity. I also do not know who the poster or Nelville Flynn are -- it's a basic fact of anonymous blogging, it could have been anyone.
A month or so ago some other anonymous comments were taunting Sara DLG to reveal "her" identity. Now with the testimony during the NLRB hearing (as reported by Indy), we all know even more conclusively what Huff and McCandless were trying to do then and now.
And I think the NLRB hearing may have been settled long ago if Team Newspress were not so arrogant and conniving from the start, with McCaw to Obey The Law.
And I have some real estate on Anacapa Island to sell if anyong really believes the Nipper oath meant anything.
Once again, the blogger hosts and commenters are not the problem here on why the Teamsters unionization had to occur and why the negotiations on a labor contract continues to be delayed. Shooting the messengers never won a war.
Here are some points about Scott Steepleton's character I can attest to from things I know and see first hand. He fired Melinda Burns for bias, yet this week he wrote a story about a hearing in which he himself testified, paraphrasing his own testimony. That's bias on its face, and further the story broke basic rules from journalism 101 on fairness.
Also, Scott testified under oath that he was the assistant news editor when the mess broke last July. Just look at a transcript. It's not true. He'd been assistant news editor years ago and was demoted, and had been a reporter up until his move to associate editor after all the editors left last summer.
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