The Centre County Gazette is a very small weekly classified newspaper that just appeared a couple years ago in Centre County, Pa. The paper is 'run' - if you can call it that - by a woman named Sandie Biddle, a local resident of Centre County, Pa. Sandie's title is managing editor and she makes it very clear to anyone unfortunate enough to stop to listen that she is editor and you are not! The fact that the newspaper is in fact a rag that is rarely seen or read does not seem to bother Ms. Biddle. Personally I grab several copies each week to use as kindling in my fireplace.
I applied to work for this paper as both an advertising sales person and free-lance reporter - and got hired immediately. I got the feeling that the paper was desperate as they were virtually unknown in our community. I wasn't even on board a month before I started seeing some very disturbing things going on with the management. Sandie Biddle was extremely arrogant in her 'position' as managing editor and this arrogance came through to us employees daily. The first thing I witnessed was a fellow employee being promised unemployment compensation due to a medical problem that forced her to be incapable of working. Sandie turned around and behind the woman's back came up with fictious reasons to fire her so that she wouldn't have to pay out unemployment. This poor woman was left without a job, penniless and unable to work anywhere. When I protested Sandie's treatment of this loyal employee she said, "As Managing Editor of the paper I make decisions as I see fit".
Then I witnessed Sandie's treatment towards her customers, the very advertisers who 'butter her bread'. First she had the audacity to instruct the front desk receptionist that she 'does not take phone calls'. Therefore any business-owner who had paid hundreds of dollars for advertising and - God forbid - actually needed to speak to the so-called 'Managing Editor' could not talk with her because she HID from them behind her receptionist. This infuriates the poor business-owners who simply have questions that need answered. It became obvious to me that Sandie wants the title of 'Managing Editor' but is childish enough to refuse the responsibility to her customers that go with that title. I ended up doing her job, returning phone calls to these advertisers because I couldn't stand to see them blown off. Then when they actually emailed her, she either blew them off without responding at all, or she wrote back with childish sarcasm that embarrassed me as an employee. I finally couldn't stand to be represented by her anymore and Quit!
Due to the arrogance and immature sarcasm that Sandie Biddle exhibits the newspaper is doomed to fail.
Sandie once assigned me to do a story on a non-profit charity in our community. After spending 10 hours in travel, interviewing and writing the story for publication, Sandie changed her mind. She bragged to me that as 'managing editor she has the right to publish or not publish articles as she pleases'. I later discovered that she had a personal vendetta against the woman who operated the charity!
The public newspaper is supposed to be a community institution, serving the community.
As a former employee in two job positions I can tell you with all objectiveness that Sandie Biddle runs her little unknown newspaper to promote herself in the community. She has no desire to serve the community and the evidence is in her actions which speak far louder than print.
0 comments