Some insight into the democratian's Facebook scam.

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The whole point of the exercise is, of course, to impose the kind of censorship first made famous in their namesake publication, "Völkischer Beobachter" (The Nazi Party newspaper back in the day.)

Lou's legendary inferiorty complex is the kind of thing that makes hash in the newsroom lunchroom.  Here's some additional verbiage from a source "in the know:"

As someone who is friendly with a handful of staff at The Columbian (including a relative), I can tell you this:

1. The Facebook initiative has Lou's interests at heart. He wants absolute control of any criticisms leveled at the paper, constructive or otherwise.

2. These controlling tendencies have led to the resignations of several talented staff members, including the previous web editor who moved his family here only to have no authority in his position. He took them as far as he could considering. But, the lack of dedication to site planning and resistance to the opinions of hired consultants resulted in losing someone who has more social media fans than the paper itself.

3. The Facebook experiment is considered a huge failure among staff. The intent to grow traffic through social media has topped out at 1500 fans. Barely the audience of a popular teenage girl.

4. Lou's recent column had staffers' eyes rolling, and even some Facebook commenters were deleted for seeing through the obvious ploy to save face and gain comments.

5. Staff feels forced to engage in social media. Yet when they do, they are criticized heavily if they don't do it the way their editor prefers. Consensus is that he is so enamored of the spotlight, he wants others as watered-down as possible.

6. Morale is at an all-time low in the newsroom and other departments are wondering what the real strategy is for columbian.com. Rumor is a paywall may limit the free access to stories like larger NY Times. That move would surely disrupt the advertising the site gets.

7. This post will be deleted soon. But, my friends at the paper deserve someone to speak up on their behalf. And readers should know that their anonymous opinions were never valued, especially if they were counter to the paper's board.

Forethought — June 15, 2011 at 10:14 a.m.

These kinds of observations are about what you would expect, working for a self-aggrandizing megalomaniac.

They provide some insight into the miserable failure that is our daily carbuncle, and particularly number 7, above, which was dead on accurate... but saved by one of the more astute posters.

One day, Scott C. might wake up and clean out the lot of the deadwood.  Because unless he does, the failed busines plan of the rag means it's doom.