Eric Mink has disappeared from the Post-Dispatch. He used to write a Wednesday column in the op-ed section from a progressive point of view. There was no announcement of his departure that I noticed, so I have no idea whether he took another job or was laid off. He just sort of isn’t there anymore.
Sylvester Brown, also a progressive voice, was offered a deal where he, too, would just sort of not be there anymore–with four weeks severance pay. His firing was based on what he calls a trumped up accusation. He decided not to go gentle into that good night. Instead, he called a press conference Monday afternoon to explain very publicly the reason for his firing.
Brown was told that he had violated the paper’s ethics policy by accepting a trip as a gift in return for writing a column. The details of the incident are at his blog, but the gist is that the day before his trip he wrote a column about a renewable energy project in East St. Louis. That column was in no way a quid pro quo for the trip, according to his statement:
If management had bothered to ask, they would have known that my trip had nothing to do with East St. Louis. If they had taken time to really know me, my past, my passions (inside and outside the Post walls) about investing in black youth and creating vibrant, sustainable urban communities, they would have instinctively understood why the Summit Council for World Peace – an international organization dedicated to addressing the crisis of world-wide poverty – invited me to Washington and offered to reimburse me for the trip.
You can listen to Brown defend his actions and speculate about the Post’s reasons for firing him:
I wondered about what was going on since I too had noticed Eric Mink’s absence. His columns were one of the reasons I continued to subscribe to this paper. The paper has deteriorated considerably over the past two years, but I hoped that it might still continue to serve a useful function and that it would not loose its progressive-friendly tone. Now, however, I am considering whether or not I want to continue my subscription. I would like to see how the paper’s management responds to Mr. Brown’s claims or if they even bother to do so. I hate to see newspapers fail — as is currently all too common — but when the management seems to go out of its way to insure that it will, I am beginning to think that I should cooperate.
Thanks for pointing me to a Jan. 9 posting at Arch City Chronicle about Eric Mink’s departure from the P-D:
a couple of months ago.
He couldn’t really talk about what had happened, but he confirmed that he was no longer at the P-D. It sounds like he took the deal, though he was arguing about the size of his severance, since the P-D didn’t want to include his time in the 80s-90s before he went to New York. The size of his severance package was going to depend on the number of years of service.
Hello all,
I previously pledged to let you know if I started writing again. Below is a link to the first column I’ve written since the Post-Dispatch eliminated my job (and my employment) early in January. It is a freelance piece I was invited to write by “The St. Louis Jewish Light,” and its subject is Obama’s decision to expand the criteria for stem cell research that might qualify for federal funding.
If you choose to read it and have any reactions you’d like to share, I’ll be happy to hear from you.
Thanks — and thanks to the hundreds of you who were kind enough to send me notes of encouragement in response to the previous e-mail about my separation from the newspaper.
Best regards,
Eric
Here’s the link.