[Infowarrior] - More on CBS and CNET

[Richard Forno]

At CNET, ‘morale is plummeting and people are pissed off’


— A disclosure attached to a CNET story posted on Thursday.

On Wednesday, CNET staffers in San Francisco went into an all-hands meeting hoping to hear that parent company CBS had reversed its policy banning CNET reviews of products that are part of active litigation — a policy that Columbia Journalism Review said “seriously damaged the tech review and news site.”

There had been hints around CNET that the edict might be overturned. During a meeting last Friday, Reviews editor-in-chief Lindsey Turrentine sounded optimistic. “The sense of her presentation,” says one staffer, “was that while there were still a few sticking points, overall the CBSi [CBS Interactive] team had made good progress making a strong business case to CBS corporate for overturning the policy. …Every indication was that the discussions were going well.”

But two days ago, CBS Interactive president Jim Lanzone and CBS Interactive general manager Eric Johnson announced the bad news at their meeting: There would not be a policy reversal.

“They proceeded to tell us it was no big deal,” says a CNET employee. “But people kept bringing up different hypotheticals” and it became clear that it was a big deal.

Someone asked if a writer doing a round-up of DVRs could write positively about Dish’s Hopper. No, the journalists were told by the two “visibly uncomfortable” execs.

“At first it sounded like it was a policy that just applied to reviews,” a staffer says of CBS corporate’s edict. “But it seems pretty clear that there’s going to be spillover into news.”

I was told that “there was a great deal of expressed unhappiness” at the meeting, and it’s only continued on CNET forums.

“There’s a lot of chatter about how [CBS Interactive] management isn’t standing up for us. Morale is plummeting. People are pissed off.” (I invited CBS Interactive to comment on Wednesday’s meeting. “Thank you for your interest,” wrote spokeswoman Jenifer Boscacci. “At this time, we have no comment.”)

On Thursday, there was another town-hall meeting – but not devoted solely to the CBS policy controversy. Just before that meeting, CBSi boss Lanzone posted the message below to a CNET listserv.....

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http://jimromenesko.com/2013/01/25/at-cnet-morale-is-plummeting-and-people-are-pissed-off/



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