Tuesday, April 22, 2008

MOVE OVER LITTLE ROVER THE BIG DOG’S MOVIN’ IN

MOVE OVER LITTLE ROVER THE BIG DOG’S MOVIN’ IN: Some days everything goes right- sometimes too right.

Seemed like a perfect day to write more about the firing of Wayne Jenkins at Austal, as we reported on yesterday and Joan Conrow expanded upon this morning. The whole sad story of corporate malfeasance and moral depravity and press indifference in the face of bags-o-cash from the Superferry Super-criminals was gonna write itself. We could hack it out between periods of the hockey game.

A good brave man taking one for the team, a whistleblower taking on corporate crime and needing a legal defense fund.. all that bad good stuff.

But one last check before setting two fingers to keyboard brought us to Honolulu advertiser Capitol correspondent Derrick DePledge’s Capitol Notebook where he covered the whole story and even obtained quotes from Jenkins and union-rep Swan Cleveland along with a confirmation of the termination from Austal.

Great- we’ll report on the report- the final refuge of the lazy blogger who just got out-blogged. But turning to the comments section we found that Larry Geller at Disappeared News had already posted on Derrick’s post leaving us writing drivel like this.

We’ll get the hang of this thing yet.

But you have to wonder what it takes to get outside the echo drum of community activists, bloggers and citizen journalists like Katy and Jimmy.

No one was sure if Austal even heard much less cared one way or the other before the Jenkins’ firing. Does a good man have to lose his career in order for corporate malfeasance to air in today’s corporate conglomerate world of the press?

What does it take to allow one courageous employee to go public and cause one courageous mainstream-media-employed journalist like DePledge to dare to put a story like this in an advertiser-compromised Advertiser newspaper- even if only in his news-blog?

Do we- even those in the so-called alternative press- who cover these things have an obligation to Jenkins? We’re not sure of the address for his legal defense fund yet but we do know that the union was recently busted again at Austal in defiance of a previous NLRB ruling with yet another crooked Taft-Hartley addled-election and is looking for us to help them provide local people in Alabama for support of their future actions against Austal.

No 30 here. As they say...

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