Booted from Poster as financial failure of the pop idealist variety, the resilient speech-freedom champion insists on having the last word
Of course, this is something Kyiv Unedited will not allow
Here I am, Brent Boner, the last time at my chief editor’s desk writing my farewell comment, which will be the last word against all my naysayers, and if anyone writes anything after this, it doesn’t count, because I’ll already be far away, and nothing that anybody says can ever hurt me.
Dear Kyiv Poster Readers:
I’m absolutely convinced that everything I ever did at the Kyiv Poster over the last five years of my chief editorship was 100 percent right. My judgment was flawless and therefore the people I’ve hired for the newsroom will continue producing this newspaper as carbon copies of my freedom of speech prototype, so in effect, my legacy, and therefore I, will continue at the paper even though I’ll no longer be there – meaning here. Now that I’m leaving the Kyiv Poster, I just want to –
Ring, ring, ring…
Duh, I wonder who the hell that could be. Hello?
Yeah, Chippy Cheeks, this is Boss Lard, the Kyiv Poster CEO above you but below the billionaire publisher who naively bought this rag with the best of intentions and high hopes of it blazing a trail into the journalistic ether of Ukraine but is now ashamed to admit ownership of the most embarrassing asset in his portfolio. And I want to warn you, it’s unacceptable for you to say in your farewell comment that you’re leaving, because you were fired!
Duh, no, I’m leaving – on my own terms.
Hoo-wee, boy, that’s hooey; you’ve got some imagination, I’ll grant you that. You was fired, boy, that is, fi-er-ed! That is, for failing to lead the paper into profit territory after being given a five-year opportunity to do it. The testimony that came out against you in this city’s famous Saint Stephan firing-murder trial via the former owner of the Kyiv Poster, Seth Sundance, was right on. Okay, so there was a financial crisis, but hell, boy, what in tarnations have you been doing for the last two years – at least? It opened my eyes reading the full transcript of the court proceedings in Kyiv Unedited. When I brought it to the attention of our venerable owner and publisher, Moe Zohair, he was way ahead of me; said he read Kyiv Unedited all the time; said it was the number one motivating factor for him to push me to push you out. And so, you’re out! Out, I say. Fired!
I’m leaving on my own terms! Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhh…!!!
Whew, boy, you sho is funny! It’s a dang shame you couldn’t employ some of that humor in your job instead of writing freedom of speech speeches for the paper every other week; the same dang thing, over and over again, instead of steering this here vehicle of local public interest back toward its community roots so’s that those roots could sprout some money flowers. Buds and pollinating honey-making business bees of Kyiv, that is.
Lard, I don’t know what you’re talking about, duh. I took my cue from you. Don’t tell me about endless freedom of speech speeches when you did exactly the same thing in your Backlog column every other week, PR-ing your own imagined greatness, lecturing the public on how to tell a real story from a fake one: freedom of speech this, and we don’t do paid stories that, and how we’re the John the Baptist of journalism, a lone voice crying in the wilderness, and the world’s window through Ukraine, the only leading English-language newspaper, et cetera, duh, saying that PR departments are the sources of news instead of the sources themselves –
Boy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything I ever said or did was strategically planned to position the paper advantageously on the market through expertly calculated and scientific PR moves based on my deep knowledge and long experience here, as well as in America – the United States of – including in highly influential advisory posts via a major global advertising, PR, and consulting firm headquartered in the world’s highest seat of power in Washington, D.C., and it was up to you to simply run the ball through the post. But you failed, boy, you failed! You fell flat on your thumb-head-shaped chipmunk face and the ball bounced right out of your incompetent hands – and that Media Man costume didn’t help much either! So don’t you go saying how you’re leaving the paper. What you got to say is that from such and such a date you will no longer be with the paper – period!
And what, duh, will you do if I don’t?
Why, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll go down there myself, obliterate your last work of so-called independent hard-hitting investigative journalism, most of which has been highly one-sided, opinionated, looking for a conflict for the sake of a conflict where there wasn’t one to begin with, and annoying as hell to read, not to mention financially loss-making, and replace it with some normal wire stories, patch things up, put the paper to bed and call it a day. Your mouth’ll be shut and you won’t say nothin’, exceptin’ you’ll be out on your ass not having said nothin’ for good. No last word, no chivalrous final thoughts, no noble farewell, no heroic exit – nothin’!
Lard continues…
Think I can’t do it, boy? Why, I’m an old newsman myself. I was writin’ the news not long after you was born – the old-fashioned way, looking for the truth and slapping it in the face as I saw it, and not no phony controversy, or havin’ to make things up, twisting words and sentences and facts around, or adding some I made up on my own, so’s that they start off as one thing and end up meaning another, inserting barely concealed editorialized commentation so the story suits my opinion of what it should be, to artificially create some tabloid sensation, ‘cause the truth, the way I’d catch it, wuz already there – stark naked like the day that it was born, with all the controversy and conflict and sensation already part of its inner nature – you got me, boy?!
Lard continues…
And notwithstanding my age, I’ve kept up with the technology; I know the ropes. So don’t go challenging me, boy. Because I can go down there and make the whole thing look like you was never there. Probably something that’d be damn good for the paper, too.
Lard continues…
So you say, starting from such and such date you will no longer be at the paper, or that such and such date will be your last day here. That’s a small gift for your precious freedom of speech – I’m giving you a choice of how to put it – haw, haw, haw! So you do that, boy! You do that, ‘cause you do anything else, when you gone, I’m gonna write you up real mean and ornery-like in my Backlog column, so that your name’s muddy infamy from here until doomsday, from one side of the globe to the other – you got me, boy?!
To be continued – in any number of permutations.
Filed by Jack Step, May 7, 2013