This thread from David Mastio is a pretty damn good read. Seems he’s on the outs with Gannett and USA TODAY and has decided to pull back the curtain on what’s been happening at the company, or as he put it, how the company is going off the rails.
Sure, it seems a little self-serving for him to do this NOW, but we’ll still take it.
Worth a read:
After 25 years associated with @Gannett and @USATODAY, I’ve got some things to say about how the company is going off the rails, wokism is taking over and conservatives are being purged. You can read more about it in my New York Post op-ed. https://t.co/d1jqv8Tr21
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Demoted for a tweet.
Annnd nobody is surprised.
I’m partially to blame because I didn’t speak up publicly until the axe fell on me. I was demoted for tweeting that women are the people who get pregnant. A braying mob of my colleagues demanded I be fired for making the workplace “unsafe.”
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
They demoted him for saying women get pregnant.
No, really.
Hey, we’ve been telling you guys the media sucks for years now …
But before we get to me, here’s what happened across the country before @Gannett announced this month that it was shuttering or scaling back all of its daily opinion pages across dozens of states, except flagship USA TODAY.https://t.co/msyzPJNajG
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
USA TODAY’s editorial page editor @KristenDel said it was because opinion pages across the company had failed to “evolve.” Gannett’s local opinion pages have evolved plenty, but in recent years readers have concluded they just don’t like what they’ve evolved into.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
People get tired of reading woke crap that tells them they’re bad people for things they have no control over.
Yup.
Evolve, that’s cute.
Over the last decade @Gannett has purged the conservative voices at its local papers. There used to be dozens of feisty conservative opinion pages, often with a staff of 1 or 2. Now there are none.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
None.
How do I know? Every day for years, a memo has gone out sharing local opinion that would be of interest nationwide. Conservatives don’t appear there much anymore beyond a few freelancers.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Gosh, it sounds like they’re censoring conservative voices.
But we keep being told that’s only in our imagination and if we bring it up we’re WHITE NATIONALISTS and CONSPIRACY THEORISTS … REEEEE!
At regional papers like the @IndyStar, @Enquirer and @TheOklahoman_, storied and influential conservative editorial pages have been replaced with a bland corporate liberalism. Only one is left — @AZCentral.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Bland, corporate liberalism.
That’s like the mainstream media all summed up, right there.
For instance, in NJ, three of @Gannett’s papers endorsed the Republican for governor only a few years ago. But in 2021, none did. The intellectually diverse local editorial boards were replaced with a state-wide liberal board that endorsed the Democrat.https://t.co/ZRHNfyLGkO
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
HA HA HA HA HA HA
Duh.
What about editorial cartoonists? All the conservatives are gone now. @Varvel was the last. What about local staff columnists? @AZCentral’s @RJRobb is the last holdout across 200 plus daily newspapers. @USATODAY has one.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Luckily sites like ours have cartoon sections.
Did you know that? Go look!
Local editorial page editors who do dare to publish something controversial and conservative can’t be sure it will run. Junior staffers at regional design centers can overrule them, spiking copy in the print edition.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Junior staffers aka recent grads who think they’re smarter than everyone else and who only push woke ideas and narratives.
You want to know why @Gannett’s opinion pages died? They were murdered when corporate wokism replaced intellectually diverse voices in touch with communities, substituting a standardized liberalism out of place in many towns served by the newspaper giant.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Corporate wokism is killing everything.
But you guys knew that.
So what about @USATODAY? There the story is the same. Newsroom leaders like DelGuzzi and @nicole_carroll are cowed by the young activists of a newsroom “diversity” committee who want to silence any voices who raise doubts about their extreme Diversity, Equity and Inclusion agenda
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Sound familiar? This is happening all over and in every industry.
Good times.
At @USATODAY, They gives copies of columns to the newsroom “diversity” committee to review and edit. So much for the wall between news & opinion. Even if a column isn’t spiked, if it is controversial she will pad the impact by running a phalanx of lib columns on the same subject
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Holy crap.
When the “diversity” committee doesn’t get advanced notice, its members and supporters root around in unpublished copy looking for things to censor. @ChenWilliams who did this to one of my columns was promoted from Atlanta to corporate HQ for her trouble.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Classy as ever.
When it comes to the DEI agenda at USA TODAY, no opinion is too extreme for the news pages and no dissenting voices are allowed. A perfect example is @Alia_E’s take on the poor misunderstood pedophiles. 1000 words and no disagreement with the premise
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Poor, misunderstood pedophiles.
K.
So what brought my career at @USATODAY to a flaming end? That’s a funny story.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Young woke activists on staff had been fighting for months to scrub the “discriminatory” and “hateful” phrase “pregnant women” from USAT. Last August, they finally succeeded in replacing it with “pregnant people” in a breaking news alert after the CDC used the same language.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Imagine how stupid you’d have to be to think the phrase ‘pregnant woman’ is discriminatory or hateful.
And these are the stupid people running mainstream media outlets.
I subtweeted them saying “the people who get pregnant are also called women” @susmiller, a USA TODAY news editor rebuked me by sending a link to USA TODAY’s “news” story that detailed the lives of trans men who had babies.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Tattled on him.
I compounded my sin against diversity by replying that I did not share the “opinion” of those in the newsroom that men can become pregnant.
For this, I was demoted from Deputy Editorial Page Editor and initially threatened with a $30,000 a year pay cut.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Threatened with a pay cut for saying women get pregnant.
While I was deciding what to do with my suddenly bleak future @KristenDel was assigned to root through my journalism history to find more sins so she could write a “three strikes” memo threatening to fire me if I strayed from the DEI path again.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Wow.
USA TODAY leaders had to hold multiple meetings with the “diversity” committee and the LGBTQ Employee Resource Committee to get them to accept my demotion instead of the firing they demanded.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
LOL
They wanted him FIRED for believing and saying women get pregnant.
Feelings ran so high that “diversity” committee members began swearing at Nicole Carroll for which they later apologized. Swearing at the boss is ok, but not dissenting from DEI.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
It’s equitable to swear at your boss or something.
Today, I’ve moved on, but for @Gannett it's a dark day. The future depends on getting 10 million subscribers our corporate North Star, but with woke staffers gaining a tighter grip on newsrooms, Gannett is going to have tough time connecting with readershttps://t.co/Y64Md7sRM7
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Nobody wants to read that crap.
A journalism institution that doesn’t share the same values and priorities as its red and purple state readers isn’t long for this world. If you own the stock, you might ask CEO Mike Reed what he plans to do about it or if he is even engaged enough to know what is going on.
— David Mastio (@DavidMastio) June 24, 2022
Fair point.
Hope their stock holders are paying attention.
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