That remains to be seen. The legal expertise shared by Caplis and Silverman will be a boost during the Kobe Bryant trial, but Silverman's voice, which is as soothing as an air-raid siren, raises doubts about long-term prospects. Only good chemistry will win them a continuance.
Odd but true: In the TV version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, compulsive neatnik Felix Unger (Tony Randall) rooms with Oscar Madison (Jack Klugman), a sportswriter who's also an inveterate slob. Madison's lack of tidiness is shared by a great many journalists across the globe, but Rocky Mountain News managing editor Deb Goeken wants to inspire the pigs who work for her to give their sties a makeover.
Mark Manger
Along with station manager Marty Durlin (background),
Kris Abrams, KGNU's Denver campaign coordinator,
is shaking the money tree.
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Last month, in a memo to staffers titled "Cleanup Part II," Goeken wrote, "It only seems like yesterday that we had pristine desktops, that books and files weren't threatening to cascade from the tops of overloaded cabinets, that long-ago lunch leftovers and calcified candy wrappers weren't dotting our beautiful (and newly shampooed) carpet. But it's been years. And it's time to take a deep breath and clean again."
Goeken made it clear that this wasn't her idea alone. "Our latest employee survey shows that most of you give the lowest marks to the state of our newsroom," she maintains. "In fact, it is your No. 1 concern. No one, you told us, wants to work in a cluttered, dingy, smelly (OK, maybe it's not smelly!) workplace." Besides, she noted, the Rocky's move to a new building it will share with joint-operating-agreement partner the Denver Post is still years away -- so everyone needs to work together to keep the old joint tolerable until then.
To that end, Goeken revealed that a crew would soon move dumpsters into the newsroom. According to her, "These are the goals: nothing on the floor under or around your desk; nothing on top of filing cabinets and coat cabinets (with some exceptions approved by Deb); tidy desktops." She also offered to provide boxes for essential documents, to "update the filing cabinet situation," and so on. As an incentive for employees to not simply laugh off her request/command, she stated that the spiffiest four-person pod on September 1, the deadline day, "will be declared the Cleanup Winner, and each pod member will receive a day off with pay." Goeken went on to announce that second-place finishers would wind up with "really good Rockies tickets" (isn't that an oxymoron?), with bronze medalists taking home "five books each at the next book sale."
These enticements apparently weren't enough to inspire instant compliance. Goeken sent out additional cleanup memos in late July and early August, offering bonuses like Rockies-Cubs tickets, complete with a parking pass, and ducats for the Reggae on the Rocks and Indigo Girls concerts to the first folks who transformed their little section of the News into a pristine wonderland.
The ultimate champs hadn't been named at press time, so there's no telling if their free day off will compensate for being seen by their peers as the biggest brown-nosers on the staff. In any event, odds are strong that the Rocky's pad will be back to its formerly slovenly self in short order. Somewhere, Jack Klugman is laughing.
