Rockin' Robyn departs Journal

OK, I teased this is a little last Thursday. My friend Robyn said adios to her Journal employment after being passed over for an editorship in the weekly newspaper division for no other reason than pure spite.

Let's back up a little and talk about Robyn's career with the Journal and some of the really great work she did both as a reporter, and yes, as an editor.

That's the really amazing part of this story, not only did Robyn have a great reporting resume, she had daily newspaper editing experience. But for the top management of the Journal none of that trumps the fact she wouldn't take a demanding assignment that would have stressed her family life.

Not that she hadn't already paid her dues in that regard. She already served her time on the police beat during a time of great antagonism by the City of Flint Fire Department with the Flint Journal.

I know, because I was also part of that era. Between the stupid demands of Journal management and the difficult daily confrontations with sources. it left me drained and burned out. By 2000, I was ready to leave that assignment behind myself. I took a new beat in 2000, one that lasted for nearly 8 years until my retirement last year.

But back to Robyn. As a police reporter, she was great. She knew her way around the beat and got stories no one else could get.

For a long period of time anyone covering the Flint beat had to contend with a fire chief, Theron Wiggins, who was very difficult to deal with. The City was severing ties with the Genesee County 911 system and was doing everything it could to hide some major deficiencies in the changeover.

Not to mention the chief's purchase of a luxury SUV for his personal use with money the City Council had allocated to buy TWO less well appointed vehicles for fire department and paramedic use.

Oh, and then there was than crazy episode where the Chief authorized the sale of a well worn paramedic vehicle, but had a newer, less worn vehicle delivered to the auction instead by accident. But, I digress.

Mostly when dealing with the fire chief you had to constantly answer his charges that everything was race related. Mix his racist charges with an editorial management that cowered from the mere mention of race, even when they were completely unjustified, and you had a recipe for the creation of major stomach ulcers.

So Robyn and I combined on a 911 story that took months to put together. Getting information, and Robyn was doing the heavy lifting on the story, was excruciatingly difficult. We were stonewalled all along the way. But through Freedom of Information Act requests, source work and ingenuity Robyn put the story together.

Although we had tried and tried to talk to the chief, he refused. Finally we told the city public relations person that we would have to go to press without any rebuttal or comment from the director of the 911 center, the fire chief.

Wiggins was literally forced by City Hall officials to meet with us. But in one of the strangest interviews of my career, Robyn and I showed up and found not just the fire chief and the public relations person waiting for us, but a crowded conference room with about eight people, all friends and supporters of the fire chief.

A few niceties and then we sat down for the interview, but not before the chief launched into a tirade about how this would never happen to a "white" chief and how unfair we had been, our corrupt agenda, blah, blah, blah. It went on for several minutes. At the end of the tirade, Robyn simply looked at the chief and said: "Will you answer our questions now?"

Well, not quite. First the chief asked Robyn if she "was Jewish?" I couldn't believe the question and said so, but eventually we got down to our questions, which were really never answered, but at least we could finally get the story in the paper.

Robyn and I won an AP and Michigan Press Association award for the series, but I don't think anyone in management ever realized how difficult it was to pull that one together.

When an opening for a Sunday editor (I have been advised since I posted this that the position was actually the night editor position) arrived, Robyn, who was a reporter, and another copy desk editor applied for the job. In a weak moment of competence, the Journal hired Robyn for the job and she excelled at the position. She was one of those rare editors who remembered what being a reporter was like and yet, understanding that she had to sometimes confront reporters about holes in their stories.

She did a great job as an editor. But she was also starting to raise a family and left us to do that important job.

Later, when the kids started school, she returned as a part-time reporter for our new weeklies. She picked up her aggressive reporting expertise right where she left off. Fast forward to last year when the Journal lopped off about 40 editorial employees in the buyout.

As a part-time employee, Robyn was not eligible for the buyout, but when so many people parachuted to safety, the top management desperately wanted her to come back to the daily newsroom and resume her work on the police and fire beat along with Bryn, another great beat reporter, who was also staying put.

While management probably didn't think anyone was paying attention, we saw Robyn brought upstairs for meetings with the top editors several times. Word was that she was told if she didn't take that job, she would never be considered for either of the two editorial positions available in the weeklies. Heck, I saw her in animated conversations with the top guy from my seat through his spacious windowed office.

But Robyn probably realized if she came upstairs she would become part of the great general assignment pool that has replaced the former beat system and that her life would no longer be her own. So she did the unthinkable. She told them "no."

Two good weekly editors took their wheelbarrow full of money and departed along with the rest of us.

Instead of hiring Robyn to fill one of them, the only truly logical and sensible choice, the bosses made good on their promise and hired two weekly lightweights from the outside, kissing off the daily experience that Robyn would have brought to the job. Not to mention her wonderful interpersonal skills.

Now, I've gotten word that at least one of the new weekly editors has expressed the opinion that she doesn't have to worry about "Journal style" because that's what copy editors are supposed to do. And the new editors' management style is more in line with the "beaten like rented mules" philosophy of the new Journal.

Apparently there was a dressing down of some of the weekly reporters recently because they were allegedly creating a "toxic" atmosphere. What that means is that they were likely questioning the stupid and wasteful new management demands or at least asking for pay for all the hours they worked.

The reporters were flatly told, if they didn't like what was happening, to leave. I guess Robyn gave them their answer.

Good for her. The richness of embarrassments continues at the Journal.