New York Daily News Gets The Axe -- Being a Bad Team Player Might be Good For You -- The Lorax is Found

The meeting lasted less than a minute. By the time it was over, reporters and editors at The Daily News had been told by Tronc that the newsroom staff was being cut in half and that the editor in chief, Jim Rich, was out of a job.
NYT

Advice to a journalist means
"stock up on your cheap pork and beans"
cuz newsroom repeal
is now very real -- 
the triumph of Tronc philistines. 

When you hear the phrase “bad team player,” you might think of someone who refuses to collaborate. But you can also hurt your organization if you burn out trying to accommodate every co-worker’s request or attending more meetings than you can keep up with. This can stem from a basic inability to draw boundaries or an ego-driven desire to look like an office MVP.

WSJ

A team player toiling in Texas

set as his goal a new Lexus --

but all of his meetings

were more like hard beatings -- 

which dismantled his solar plexus. 

"The Lorax", by Dr. Seuss, was inspired by the patas monkeys that live in West and East Africa. These creatures share the Lorax’s general facial characteristics, particularly his distinctive mustache. The monkeys’ vocalizations sound like the Lorax’s “sawdusty sneeze.” And the monkeys depend, for 80 percent of their diet, on the Seussian-looking whistling thorn acacia trees of the Laikipia plateau.

Washington Post

I wish that a monkey could be

put in the Presidency.

Dr. Seuss would approve

of such a fine move -- 

 the green yeggs and spam would then flee.

Studies show that writing in ALL CAPS causes readers to retain less information, to skim over the words, and to, in general, become confused because it’s REALLY DIFFICULT to make out the shapes of LETTERS when they are all VERY LARGE.

Washington Post

caps are for pig-headed fools
who understand not their own tools. 
i find lower case
gives me a firm base
for fighting my poetic duels.

Author's note: Professor Bruce Young of Brigham Young University replied to the above poem via email thus:

Good counsel! I use all caps VERY rarely. Messages in all caps feel like shouting, and most of us don't like to be shouted at. Also, you lose the distinctions that help with structure and clarity (like capitals at the beginning of sentences and of proper nouns). 

I believe we also sense that something is not quite right with the person who uses all caps: either they're desperate, or they're angry, or they're terribly excited, or they are absolutely sure they have the most important thing in the world to say and need everyone to know that. But whatever lies behind the use of all caps, we sense that the person is not quite thinking straight, and at the very least is likely not in a condition to think with care, nuance, or perspective.