More from Brian Lawlor, via Crain's
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Originally Posted by
sumas
Thought I would share the reply letter I got from wxyz.
Thanks for posting that, Susan. Fellow forumer Bill Shea took your pass and ran down the letter writer, a senior vice president at the station's Cincinnati-based owner, to 'splain some more for a blog post about a "War of words brewing."
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Lawlor told me this afternoon that the entire company has been pushing for two years to have its employees at all stations take on multiple roles, such as what is considered “one-man band” work that has a single person acting as the camera person, editor, writer and on-air talent sometimes.
Some people adapt to that better than others, but Lawlor declined to say if the multi-tasking was something that Wilson declined to do. He also said there wasn’t a “formal back and forth” over the contract, but more of a “philosophical discussion” instead. . . .“His flexibility didn’t allow us to get where we needed to go.”
Wilson disputes that. "There was no negotiation whatsoever. The philosophical discussion was an effort by me to enlist Scripps' support in a nonprofit model that would have allowed me to continue this work and reduce their costs drastically. They said they’re not interested."
He also said he took a "huge pay cut" in his last contract while executives at Scripps were getting pay increases..