A moving tale

In a move that many of us questioned and even mocked, a group of Flint Journal employees who worked for the series of weekly newspapers owned by the paper were moved onto the first floor of the Journal for the purpose of separating the two operations a while back.

At great expense, phones were moved, furniture was moved and accommodations made for the weekly reporters.

Daily reporters questioned the move because a number of the beats overlapped and under the new system, there was no interaction and the looming possibility of great overlap of effort. But the powers that be decided it was important for us to compete.

No matter that at the time, we were stretched thin for personnel and the move then required that instead of coordinating our efforts to the best interest of the readers we were forced to duplicate efforts in the best interest of our jobs.

At the time, I covered among many other beats, the City of Davison, Richfield and Davison townships. Another weekly reporter also had the same responsibility and we often found ourselves sitting at the same meeting for three and four hours. A ridiculous waste of time and money, but required by the brainiacs who run the Journal newsroom.

All this to say that the experiment is now over. With the huge staff reductions, the powers, the same ones who thought separation was a swell idea, are now moving the weekly staff back to the second floor where they can once again work together with daily reporters. No doubt more expense and more disruption, but I can promise you one thing, the brainiacs will suffer no consequences for their original stupid move.

So here it is: I told you so.