Super – Or Not

Click image for a larger view

Are you feeling super?

I hope so.

Personally, I’ve been feeling a little less than super. I’ve had a few days of late that have been downright lousy. Like the day when 28 of my newsroom colleagues – 25 of them my friends in the newspaper guild – were told to go home. Their services were no longer necessary. They were laid off.

I definitely didn’t feel super that day. In fact, from the sound of the way our publisher talked on Black Tuesday, the paper didn’t seem so super. Our national advertising was in the crapper. Our revenues were lagging. Our business, as it stood on June 21, wasn’t sustainable. Thus, we marked the first day of summer at The Indianapolis Star, by pulling out the ax.

Amazing how much that ax accomplished. In less than two weeks, the Star’s troubles appear now to be behind us. We are, as the full page ad in Sunday’s paper said, “super.”

Our newspaper sales are growing, the ad said. And “we are feeling super!” Note the exclamation point. That means it must be really super.

It’s nice to know that the newspaper is super again. And in less than two short weeks after we were in such an un-super situation. That’s an amazing turnaround. Our newspaper sales must have grown quickly after those people were “let go.”

Unless, of course, the Star was growing while those people were still here.

Could it be that we were super all along? Everybody says we’re still making a profit. Now we learn that our readership is growing. Of course, our executives at Gannett have been getting big bonuses. And our company earned a $500-million profit last year.

All that sounds pretty super.

I wonder, then, how our friends who were laid off feel. Some of them don’t know how they’re going to pay the light bill, eat, keep a roof over their head, pay for their doctor visits and keep gas in the car as they look for work. That sounds less than super.

The one good thing out of all this is that, now that the Star is super again, the rest of us who are still working here should be in line for a super pay raise!

Note the exclamation point. That means really super.

– Bobby King, President Indianapolis News Guild