I appreciate your opinion about it being bad taste to list those who were laid off. Perhaps others feel that way as well.

I don’t mind explaining why I made the choice that I did.

1. More information, so long as it is accurate, is almost better than less information. The exception to this is when someone’s life is at stake and releasing information could further endanger that person’s life.

2. Accurate information kills gossip. Rather than idle speculation and piece-meal answers, an accurate source in a clearly visible place provides a place for documentation and comment. Ozarks Unbound is not an anonymous blog. Our writers have bylines and we stand behind our work. At the end of the day, it’s my name behind everything that is published there, for better or worse.

3. The newspaper industry in this equation will not or is ill-equipped to cover itself. Media, on the whole, tends to play nice with other media. I tell myself that a similar level of scrutiny would be applied when any larger local companies merged. Also, newspapers are not like other companies. They define how news is presented, how our viewpoints are shaped in society. This is the biggest transformation in a generation up here in the newspaper game.

3. This is a personal reason. When I was laid off from the Morning News in April, I actually took comfort in seeing my name listed among the others on Max Brantley’s Arkansas Times blog. I didn’t know who else was let go and I scrambled for information all day that day.

So those are my reasons for publishing the list of names. You might still think it was in bad taste, and I’m cool with that, but at least you have my thought process.

2. Opinion is easy to throw around when you are disgruntled and not even involved.

3. Skip ALSO posted this after his initial post “Soon, there will only be 1 set of eyes watching City Hall — mine— and that’s too bad. Good government needs many eyes.” He’s right.

4. Job loss is awful. It would be nice to see offerings of comfort rather than mouths spouting borderline slander (comments on OU).