No longer run by word-geeks........

The mighty Mezz is no longer run by word-geeks.
Last month the mighty Mezz was sold to Gatehouse Publications; i.e. no longer owned by the Ewing famblee.
We have our fingers crossed. The mighty Mezz wasn’t making much money, but under the Ewings it was a class act.
The concern is whether Gatehouse will change the direction of the paper — make it ad-driven instead of news-driven.
This morning (Sunday, February 11, 2007) new managers were announced at the mighty Mezz. Both are from within, but they aren’t word-geeks. When the Ewings owned the paper, Senior was publisher and Junior was Prez. Junior essentially ran things. Both were word-geeks.
Now Carl Helbig has been named Publisher, and along with Kathy Hammond will run all the local Gatehouse Publications, including the mighty Mezz, the Post weeklies, and recently purchased AdNet, once a competitor of the mighty Mezz.
“This is what Thomson did,” Linda observed. “Buy a company, and then buy it’s competition. It’s called ‘monopolization,’ which I thought was illegal.”
“No longer does a company have to deal will competition. It can be grossly inefficient, and charge inflated prices.”
Both Helbig and Hammond are managers, not word-geeks. Their prime concern is the bottom-line.
Helbig had been around for years, essentially a manager. Hammond managed Human Resources at MPN — she was hired after we moved into the new building.
I was kind of distant from both — hardly ever spoke to Helbig at all, and only dealt with Hammond as the HR manager.
The Ewings I spoke to quite a bit; because they, like me, were word-geeks.
Thankfully, Boss-man and K-man and Queeny and the all-powerful Tim Belknap are still around.
We have our fingers crossed. We hope the mighty Mezz doesn’t become Fox.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily Messenger where I once worked; part of Messenger-Post Publications. (MPN also owns the 10 Post weeklies.)

George Ewing Senior bought the Canandaigua Messenger in 1959 — retired a few years ago, handing over the reins to his son George Junior.

Boss-man is Robert Matson, Executive-Editor (head of news); K-man is Kevin Frisch, Managing Editor; “Queeny” is Lenore Friend, a local editor; and “the all-powerful Tim Belknap” is the city-editor, a local editor — he manages the reporters. (My brother-in-Boston has declared the mighty Mezz is reprehensible because Tim Belknap shepherds the entire paper (WRONG-OOO, WRONG-OOO, WRONG-OOO, WRONG-OOO, WRONG-OOOO), and misspelled a few things in an e-mail. He forgot that Belknap is one of many editors — and that I’ve mentioned both Matson and Frisch in the past.)