Comes now Dennis Ryerson, editor of the Indy Gannett…er, Indy Star, telling us how surprised he is that some folks might have gotten a bit huffy about a story they ran on Friday.
I mean, all they did was post the salaries of EVERY SINGLE STATE EMPLOYEE on their website that day.
That information is none of your business, Mr. Ryerson, because it’s none of mine.
Like the one lady said: If you want to post pay rates and job titles, that’s fine. I’d even go farther and say you could print min-max-average for any particular job title. But identifying what specific people make is beyond the pale, be damned to your journalistic attitude of “defenders of the public trust.”
The argument that this made it easier for state employees to find out where they stood among their peers doesn’t wash, either, because the state could (and in my opinion as a former state employee, should) provide this information — with names removed — on its own internal network.
But what the hell. This is the kind of crap you pull on a regular basis that makes me wish for the Pulliams back. Even though they weren’t the greatest, they still had a better understanding of propriety.
A "surly curmudgeon[], suspicious and lacking in altruism." (Robert A. Heinlein)