Athens Observer
About
The Athens Observer was a weekly paper where Livia and I worked for a year or so (she was actually employed there; I mainly volunteered to help with computer stuff) in 1992-3 or so. I think during our tenure it was originally owned by local aristocrat Trey Hutchinson, but ran up debt which forced him to sell it; it was then bought out by Jim Dunlap, a local lawyer, who ousted chief editor Pete McCommons and then popular columnist Lee Shearer not long after that. The staff at this point offered to buy it from Dunlap, but he laughed them off and they promptly walked out. Apparently Dunlap had been expecting this, because he had replacements in by the afternoon and was able to meet that week's publishing deadline for remaining the county legal organ. It soon fell under the ownership of a right-wing group.
It was defunct by 2002, according to the Library of Congress records.
"Sabotage"
After Dunlap bought the paper, he ordered (to the best of my recollection) a very large debt to him entered on the books and also began the time-honored vulture capitalist activity of "cost-cutting" -- starting, of course, with the staff, but also including the telephones.
The Observer previously had four external lines, each with its own number and with an automated bumping of incoming calls to the next available line if one was in use. (The first number was the one given out as the paper's official number.)
Dunlap cut this down to two -- but for some unknown reason, the two lines removed included the first one (the official incoming number). This meant that suddenly, in effect, people were unable to call the paper, although staff was still able to call out by using the remaining lines.
It suddenly occurred to me that if I picked up a phone and pressed the button to use the first line, the system would see this line as "busy" and bump incoming calls to the next line -- so I did that, and it worked. People were able to call in again.
The walkout came several days later -- and thinking that Dunlap could use a taste of his own medicine and really need not benefit from my unpaid labor (to wit: picking up a phone and pressing a button), I hung up the phone on my way out the door.
Some days later I got a call from him claiming I had sabotaged the phones. Taking the high road (and enjoying the moment just a bit), I explained exactly what I had done and how to fix it.
(I recorded that call on a cassette, and I think somewhere I still have it; I'll digitize it when I can find it.)
Pages
- I actually got Clarence the Rock published in the Observer, mainly via personal connections and offering it for free.