There's an interesting piece on the fate of the U.S. branch of the Guardian newspaper by Steven Perlberg (who has bad opinions about brown liquor but is a fine reporter on other, non-intoxicant-related matters) over at BuzzFeed. The whole thing is worth reading; I just want to highlight this bit:
At the meeting, Guardian US editor Lee Glendinning announced that the company had signed a lease agreement to move to a smaller Brooklyn office.
It was a room full of journalists, so the questions flew. Where? What’s the address? According to multiple people at the meeting, one reporter remarked that Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, owned some buildings in Brooklyn. Was this one of them? ...
The newsroom was incredulous. Some wondered if the Guardian expected sources to feel secure communicating with reporters inside a Kushner building.
A month later, Glendinning announced a change of plans: Guardian US would instead relocate to Midtown Manhattan, a worse commute for many of its Brooklyn-based journalists but to a building without a White House connection. Interim Guardian US CEO Evelyn Webster told staff that the blunder cost the company about $250,000 — a figure that, according to a person familiar with the company’s finances, reflected the loss of expected cost savings from the original move. (The company has denied the number.) Days later, Guardian US announced a new round of cost cuts — another 20%.
Emphases mine.
Simply put, this is what the Guardian gets for listening to their employees: Their objections should have been noted and then filed away into some dusty basket, preferably of the circular variety. And a worse commute/fewer jobs are what the Guardian's writers get for being such whinging yobs. If your sources are worried about meeting in a Kushner-owned building, go meet them somewhere else. There's a billion (literally, one billion; I've counted them) different places in New York City to meet someone, very few of which are owned by The Bad People You Hate.
The lesson, as always, is that no good manager ever listens to anything his writers (wait, I mean, workers, not writers specifically, this is definitely not a rant about the awfulness of writers who are definitely not terrible, especially at the Free Beacon) have to say about the management of the establishment for which they are employed. Just shut up and write work.
Note: This has been today's lesson in Sonny Bunch Management Theory: Everyone Sucks But You, Act Accordingly. If you wish to receive the entire manual, please mail 17 installments of $97.92 to the Washington Free Beacon's magisterial offices, which are located many floors above Virginia trade publication The Politico, and he will send you the whole plan. It includes chapters such as "Alcohol: How to Keep the Knobs Happy" and "Why Firing People Is More Hassle Than Quietly Sneering At Them Until They Leave Of Their Own Volition."