Tiffany Scrobble Reported the News

“When America’s most aggressive newspaper cost-cutter makes a run at the nation’s largest newspaper chain (Gannett), it is hardly a cause for cheer,” said Jim Friedlich, chief executive of the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding sustainable business models for local journalism. “This is the lumber company trying to buy the national park.”
WSJ

Tiffany Scrobble reported the news

and didn't care whose reputation might bruise.

Like most of the other newspapering folk,

Tiffany Scrobble was terribly broke.

But though pinching pennies was her stock in trade,

she wouldn't change jobs for a mountain of jade.

She wrote with a will and she wrote with a way

that kept all her stories from being passe.

She worked for the Bulldog Diurnal Gazette,

a blazing good paper quite deeply in debt.

Founded by pioneer printers when Grant

marched into Vicksburg to make them recant.

The newsroom was frowzy from years going by,

leaving it fragrant with smoke and cheap rye.

Tiffany worked at a desk in that room

(and wished the accountants would spring for a broom.)

Reporters were given free rein to narrate

anything making the bigwigs deflate.

The place was a bedlam, a stew of wordplay;

where writers complained (but would not go away.)

It happened one day that the publisher caved

and sold the newspaper to bankers depraved.

They moved in and started to squeeze things real tight;

no light bulbs replaced -- writers worked in twilight.

Seniority was not a popular term;

pensions caused all of those bankers to squirm.

And so they ejected the old rank and file,

but that did not cause young Ms. Scrobble to smile.

Though she was promoted, twas not long before

summoned was she through new management's door.

They told her to sit, they examined her dress;

they hemmed and they hawed as they chewed watercress.

Told that her salary now was reduced

and that her byline away had been sluiced,

the management waited to see if she'd crack --

but she simply smiled like she'd taken Prozac.

Expense account gone; no fact checkers employed.

Free coffee and donuts were tossed in the void.

Allowance for gas was a nickel per mile.

Forget the smartphones -- back to rotary dial!

Tiffany Scrobble persevered like a champ;

nothing they did could her spirits long damp.

But then came the day when reporters were told

that current events had been way oversold.

The Bulldog Diurnal Gazette would retreat

from news to refocus on memories sweet --

using the morgue, all reporters would write

about Eisenhower or flying a kite.

This would increase circulation among

readers who hated the new and the young.

Tiffany Scrobble was given the beat

of Gentlemen's Sports -- mainly how to shoot skeet.

She worked and she slaved, but she couldn't produce

anything that wasn't very obtuse.

Her nerves became fractured, she bit off her nails.

I will not distress you with further details.

Suffice it to say that her health and her soul

suffered until she descended to sheol.

Jobless and homeless, she now walks the streets --

one of the many hedge fund obsoletes.