In the wake of the budget trimming at the Minnesoros “Independent”, someone leaked a copy of Robin “Rew” Marty’s memo to the surviving staff to Romanesko.  Who printed it (I add emphasis):

Memo to Center for Independent Media employess

Hi, everyone. I know the last 24 hours have been a lot to think about. We also understand that one of the the assets of online media is that everyone knows lots of reporters, and has established very close relationships with their media, both local and national. I need to ask you all to please not respond to media questions about the CIM and our restructuring process. If you receive any calls or emails, please forward that information on to me so I can direct inquiries to the proper channel. It is imperative that you do not talk to the media yourself about this issue. Any violation of this will be grounds for immediate dismissal.

Thank you for your assistance in this, and one again, thank you all for continuing on with us. If you have any questions, please do hesitate to contact me.

Robin Marty
Deputy Program Director
Center for Independent Media

On the one hand, it’s “good” to see that an organization that would seem to have no capacity for shame actually being embarassed.

Or at least to know they should be.

David Brauer on the melt-down:

In essence, the memo tells the chain’s remaining muckraking journalists not to talk to muckraking journalists calling about recent budget slashing.

…

For the record, I’ve emailed Marty — no response. CIM spokesperson Dan Walter, emailed me Monday that “a letter from the publisher on the site tomorrow explaining the situation” would be posted — it wasn’t. And requests to interview CIM poohbah David Bennahum have been met with Walter’s cordial stonewalling (though a Colorado site gets hilariously contradictory interviews with CIM’s leadership here.)

If Bennahum thought this was going to blow over, Romenesko just blew him up.

 Welcome to the feeding frenzy, by the way, Romanesko and Brauer.  Glad to see what it takes for alt-leftymedia to make it on the alt-leftymedia radar:

Agenda journalists obfuscate and stonewall about their funding?  Not a story.

Buddies of lefty alt-media figures feel they’ve been shafted by fellow lefty alt-media figures?  That’s a story.

But better late than never, anyway.