I don't have much formal experience with newspapers.  My only formal jobs have been writing for U-K from time to time, and a few unpaid drafting and data sorting jobs with small papers in the west.  But you could say I have newspapers in my blood.

My Father worked for several newspapers.  I remember visiting him at the Saint Louis  Post-Dispatch when he was an editor there.  I visited him in Wyoming when he was the editor for one of the small papers in Jackson Hole.  I also spent time with him, sometimes providing actual work, at papers he edited in Friday Harbor, Washington, and Homer and Wasilla, Alaska.  He now works as a reporter for the Associated Press.

My Mother worked for the Chicago Tribune, then a paper in Plainsboro New Jersey, reported for the Burlington, Iowa paper, and was an editor at the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska

So when I say I know something about how a newspaper is run, I'm not just spouting hot air.  This is why what is happening to Useless-Knowledge infuriates me.

Mind you, I am not complaining about the long-needed editor, nor am I complaining about the mediocre writers who are leaving and/or throwing tantrums.  I am complaining that someone would try to shut down a website they did not create.

What would someone think if a reporter, editor, or columnist tried to shut down the New York Times, or even the Podunk Vermont Rag (fictional newspaper alert) solely because they once wrote for it?  I know many conservatives would laugh out loud.  Those same values clearly say that if the owner of the business has a contract to buy a seller’s product, and then the seller gets second thoughts, it is too bad.

A liberal would say that freedom of speech is too important to shut down a source of news because some disgruntled has-been gets their panties in a bunch.

I think the editor is on the right track, the only problem is that he is not yet rejecting writing/writers outright due to lack of quality.

I propose two solutions to this problem:

1.  U-K sets up an "unedited" sub-page, which has a clear warning that the articles included there are not edited for content, grammar, spelling, or even comprehensibility.  The writers who choose to use the sub-page are not mentioned on the main page, and the real writers do our best to ignore them.

2.  Matt and Steve go far beyond the requirements of their contract, and allow the disgruntled writers to request their articles be expunged from U-K.  Then, these writers don’t have any reason to act like spoiled children and prevent their articles from being “corrupted” into near-readability, with an actual point.

In any case, past writers have no right to shut down their former newspaper, or even take away their contributrions, so we could all just ignore them.  I just wish they would stop bothering me.

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