Wednesday, July 23, 2008
News AJC to departing employees: Shhhh!
Posted by Ken Edelstein on Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 3:08 PM
This may sound odd for an organization that prides itself on the free flow of ideas, but staffers who are leaving Atlanta Journal-Constitution are being required to sign an agreement that they won't “disparage” the paper or its management once they leave, according to several AJC employees.
"I was pretty surprised to see that in there," said one reporter who's viewed the agreement.
The AJC didn't care to discuss the stipulation. “As standard practice, we don't disclose any specifics regarding legal agreements we have with employees,” says spokeswoman Jennifer Morrow.
But one employee said the severance agreement being presented to employees this month bars those who sign it from making “any disparaging or untrue statements about the company,” its subsidiaries or any other employee. The source indicated that the quote was lifted from the actual agreement (I'd love to get my hands on a copy; please e-mail me if you'd like to share one).
An employee who left during last year’s buyout confirmed that similar phrasing was in the severance agreement he signed last year. That employee said the agreement caused some former writers and editors to refrain from discussing newsroom management in media coverage last year, specifically an Atlanta Magazine profile of Editor Julia Wallace by former CL writer Steve Fennessy.
Publisher John Mellott announced last week the latest in a series of staff cuts at the paper. The AJC is reducing its workforce of 2,300 by 189 people, including 85 in the newsroom and 104 in sales. Most of the reductions are likely to be achieved through attrition and voluntary severance, although the AJC will resort to layoffs if there aren't enough voluntary departures by the end of the month.
The paper’s voluntary severance package seems pretty decent. Wallace said it includes two weeks salary and benefits for each year an employee worked for the AJC or any other Cox-owned company — up to 52 weeks.
But the gag wording raises an awkward issue for the newspaper, which regularly extols transparency as an expectation for journalists along with others involved in public life. Wallace hasn't yet responded to my e-mail questions about the issue (I'll post her response if she sends one).
Among other newspapers that have reduced their staff size (which means just about every major daily nowadays), some appear to include similar speech restrictions in separation agreements, while others don't. For example, the Chicago Tribune included such wording last year, while sources at the Washington Post and the Miami Herald said that, to the best of their knowledge, their newspapers haven't.
In case you're curious: Creative Loafing's standard separation agreement doesn't include speech restrictions. But, hey, if it did, nobody could contradict me anyway!
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
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