It could all be so amusing, the pratfalls of the banana republic on Broad Street. Loyal staff members of the venerable Hartford Courant shown the door. Coverage dismantled. The editors dumped. Purges and coups. An ancient institution in the hands of a publisher most notable for being caught by the police with a drunken staff member in the wee hours in her car at a golf driving range. And worse. It’s all falling apart.  

Pretty amusing except that the state’s oldest and largest news operation has its wheels falling off in full public disarray. The newspaper to which hundreds of thousands still turn is betraying its readers, its great staff and its grand reputation in pathetic melodrama and lowclass disarray. This is not economic, this is not administrative, this is tragic. The consequences of the buffoons in charge are immeasurable and all bad.

It is not at all only that the editor and the managing editor are now out on the street identically as other loyal staffers and employees in horrid days gone-by were set out on the curb as if garbage and trash. The losing of executives is no worse whatever than the losing of the kid reporter, the veteran library master, the graybeard who remembers who the governor before this one was. It is that they are all gone and the incompetent owners and their spiritless hirelings do not care that the contribution is gone forever, that the standards and professionalism and the heritage and memory and reputation of the paper are fading to mere memory — despite the heroic efforts of the remaining staff to outlast and overcome the madness of those in charge.

A few words say millions. Look at the class and the lack of class in these two notes:

From: Graziano, Richard
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 5:04 PM
To: HC-ALL Courant and Subsidiaries; zzWTIC.Everyone
Subject: Newsroom Announcement
 
Dear Staff –
 
Last week when I announced Jeff Levine’s appointment as SVP, director of content, I said that in order to succeed, we need to quickly and boldly reinvent who we are, what we do, and how we go about doing it. The time to start is now. Our proactive strategy continues as we build a new model and new media company that is platform agnostic and focused on delivering more and better content.
 
I want to let you know that as part of the ongoing reorganization process, Cliff Teutsch and Bobbie Roessner will be leaving The Courant. Please join me in thanking both of them for their many contributions to the newspaper over the years. We wish them well.
 
Jeff has appointed the Hartford Courant’s Assistant Managing Editor/Digital, Nadine Hazell, to the position of interim editor. Attached is the note he sent to his staff regarding today’s developments.
 
Rich
 
rich graziano
ceo, president & publisher hartford courant
senior vice president tribune broadcasting
general manager tic/txx
860 241-6780  direct
860 241-3863  fax

… and …

From: Teutsch, Clifford
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 5:47 PM
To: Courant News Staff
Subject: Moving on
Folks,
I wanted to explain my thinking about leaving.
The editor’s job just doesn’t fit me anymore the way it needs to. Important work demands to be done here by an editor who is in synch with those above him.  My best assessment is I’m not that editor. Jeff asked me to stick around for several weeks while we decided whether the fit was right; leaving now is my call.
Please don’t let my decision guide you. If I were a reporter in a beat I was happy with, I wouldn’t even think about leaving The Courant. This is one of the great places to do journalism. Why? Because you and your predecessors over 244 years have made it so. Because literate, committed readers make it so.
A few of you remember that I once actually was a reporter in a beat I was happy with.  When I started covering state government in 1981, I got some wise advice from a veteran reporter. He told me to get to know the state auditors – and from them I got story after story. I mention this because that reporter was George Gombossy. And I mention that because what George and I have gone through should provide hope to any of you who are shaken today. George was already a great reporter then, a hero to me, and he went on to dig up big story after big story. I moved on through a series of editing jobs. Eventually I had one big enough that I was George’s boss, and I pushed him out of a job because I thought it wasn’t the best fit. But within a very short time George took control, seizing the opportunity to become a consumer reporter. His work as our “Watchdog” has been the model for the aggressive, locally-based, useful coverage you must continue. “Life is long,” a former editor of ours was fond of saying.  Life is also manufactured daily – and George can be your guide in doing that.
I hope to talk with as many of you as possible before I leave, and let the rest of you who are so inclined buy me a coffee or some other suitable beverage sometime after my departure. Beyond that, my plans are to stain my deck and walk up and down a favorite beach many times. Then I’ll start to think about what comes next.
Whatever and wherever that is, my heart will be with you and what you do.
With the deepest respect, appreciation and affection,
Cliff