Arbor Update

Ann Arbor Area Community News

Freedom of Speech, punch out.

11. August 2005 • MarkDilley
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What kind of rights do people at work have?

A Michigan newspaper columnist who was fired Tuesday claims his dismissal was punishment for a column he wrote on Saturday criticizing American cars.

James Briggs, a former columnist and news editor at The Daily Telegram of Adrian, Mich., says the publisher canned him for writing the column that upset auto dealers and others so close to Detroit’s auto manufacturing power houses.

via Editor & Publisher tx jenny



  1. HA! You do know that it’s, like, de rigour for journalists to be fired for pissing off advertisers, right? I mean, not that the screwing this guy got was right, but it’s not news to anyone who’s worked in journalism…
       —js    Aug. 11 '05 - 07:28AM    #
  2. One would expect the editor to have enough sense on reading the column before running it to realize it would be a problem and say so…
       —Murph.    Aug. 11 '05 - 10:46PM    #
  3. It’s interesting that the publisher didn’t have an alternate explanation for his dismissal (while implying that something else was the real issue). A more effective response would have been for the paper to publish a column or editorial refuting the earlier column. They could have cited the most recent JD Power survey, which found the Big 3, particularly GM, ahead of some of the Asian manufacturers and, I believe, all of the major European manufacturers in quality (although I supose Daimler is a European manufacturer now).
       —PeteM    Aug. 13 '05 - 03:37PM    #