Dear Wayne,
I won't call you "Willy," because that's too cheap a shot. I'm pretty sure that back in Kokomo, or wherever you came from, they wouldn't stoop to such depths.
But I'm writing because I had a memo handed to me today, one that you wrote yourself back on Nov. 2. It's a lot about me, you know, and about how strong your company is. You said some pretty hateful things and, if you'd like, we could set up a meeting in the alleyway between the Gazette and Dell's Arterial Lounge, so you could say these things to my face.
Shortly after you wrote this memo, which was apparently sent out to all the employees of the Greater Niagara Newspapers chain, you did exactly what I said you were going to do. You downsized big-time.
So let's start off on a bad foot.
You are a major-league piece of garbage. You threatened me with a letter from some slack-jawed attorney from North Carolina. Less than eight weeks after writing that memo, you fired or laid off 13 people, many of whom are my friends. Funny guy, so you are.
In your memo, you state, "I believe his intent is the continuation of a former employee's consistent and slanderous attack against the Gazette and our staff to harm our reputation and business."
You -- and Steve Braver before you -- have done a pretty fair job of harming the Gazette's reputation and business. Even before we started the Reporter, CNHI was cutting staff, shrinking the paper and growing more and more reliant on canned wire copy. But take it to the bank, my friend, we will continue to take your money, and will eventually put you out of business.
Competition, that's what America is all about, don't you think?
In your memo, you assert that your "highly successful niche magazines," "W for Women" and "Family Focus," are the mark of your success. Your own employees tell us that these mediocre throwaways were make-work projects for the wife of the young fellow you brought in from Indiana to run the papers for you. Lisa Hurt Kozarovich, her name is. She's now billed as the Gazette's managing editor.
So what do you think the chances are of Teresa Martinez getting her job back once she's exhausted her family leave?
Wayne, I don't know you. I've never met you. But I have sweated bullets in your hot tub, and dove through the ice in your swimming pool. That was back when Terry Shaw owned that house, before you came here and before he was consigned to the ignominy of North Tonawanda.
His wife, Beth, always told me how she hated it there, in the Tonawandas. They lived over a store or something, she said. She was embarrassed to invite people over. Since you took their house in Niagara Falls, maybe they're back there now.
Are you a hillbilly? I only ask because -- well, this is New York -- and you just seem, frankly, like an idiot. Can you imagine any publisher worth his salt going to the trouble of composing a two-page memo to address an opinion piece in a competing paper? And then sending it out to numerous people he'd already planned on letting go? The memo was longer than the column it addressed.
"I hope Reporter readers recognize Hudson's piece for what it is intended (sic)," you wrote, "a thinly disguised attempt to again slander the reputation and harm the business of the Gazette and Greater Niagara Newspapers."
The memo characterizes me and my writing as the "worst of all journalistic examples." So, yeah, I've kind of taken it personally. I'll put my clip file up against yours any day of the week.
Wayne, I don't know how they do business in Indiana or Alabama or North Carolina. I do know quite a bit about laws regarding libel and slander in New York State. The Gazette is a public institution and you are a public figure.
So sue me. I will win. Or meet me in the alleyway outside your office. I will win there, too. In the meantime, you and your memo are the joke of the town. If I were you, I'd be talking to my attorneys about the lawsuits that are coming shortly, rather than threatening a newsman whose rights are guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | March 1 2005 |