Three years since Dennis Phillips and Jim Moser screwed me over

Three years ago, I "tried to go home again."

I had been at the Marlin Democrat longer than any other paper besides my nearly nine years at Today Newspapers in suburban Dallas.

In the summer of 2016, Brandi Chionsini of Granite Publications sold the Democrat and Rosebud News, with me as editor of the Democrat and publisher of both, to Jim Moser of Moser Community Media.

Well, Jim had his own person in mind as editor and publisher, and it wasn't me. So, enter Hank Hargrave. I landed on my feet as editor of The Light and Champion in Center, Texas, so I didn't die.

Hank stayed about a year, and found commuting from Normangee too much. So, off he went.

That was just about the time that The Light and Champion downsized, the publisher there decided to become a publisher-editor (and falsely claimed I was editorializing in a news story, and I later found out just how wingnut he was), and sent me out the door. (I did, to be fair, get a couple of weeks of severance pay.)

This would have been at the time, or shortly after, Hargrave left Marlin.

Did Moser call me then? No.

Instead, Hearne-Franklin publisher Dennis Phillips, a person no stranger at all to alcohol, and probably not to wacky tobaccy, either, from what I know, was made publisher over Marlin and Rosebud as well.

And, proceeded to commit felonies in advertising sales, per what I've heard. (Credit or debit card abuse is a felony no matter the amount, and charging people with credit or debit cards on file for ads they did not run and did not authorize would fit the definition, Dennis.)

OK, I didn't know any of this coming there. I didn't know that, under the excuse "that text won't fit in that ad size" (sometimes that IS true, sometimes not) he would upsize ads without contacting the customer first.

I didn't know his and Theresa's daughter was the bookkeeper at all four papers, to clean up any messes.

As a result of all of the above, I didn't know that I couldn't trust the financials Jim provided me, courtesy of Dennis. They were tight as is. They were lies in reality.

(This also sets aside that the ad salesperson had been getting paid as contract labor, and that Theresa was allegedly horning in on some accounts she was landing. The former is definitely unethical, possibly illegal; the second is "just" unethical.)

So, presumably, enough people had gotten tired of Dennis that they begged Jim to hire anybody else. So he called me.

OK, a couple of weeks in, he's yelling at me for not producing magic on ad sales. Well, Jim, Dennis had 18 months to crap all over the place, and Rome wasn't built in a day.

Anyway, I sold a few ads myself. One, I gave a deal on a 6-month placement for a business card in the business review.

A day later, Moser's yelling at me about that.

"We sell to the rate card."

Really? I later found a flyer from Dennis that had a "half-off blowout sale" three months earlier in January. So, you're either ignorant of what he did or else lying. Given how long Dennis has worked for you, given that he allegedly had an ownership stake in Hearne that was going to go to Marlin as well, and given that he's likely done such sales before in Hearne ....

Let's not forget that Dennis, Theresa, or darling daughter snitched to you on this, too.

Let's add in that the Marlin office was a shambles and that there was no computer for me the day I got there, and that Dennis "offered" to have me build the paper in Hearne. No chance, Jack. No way I was going to sit under his thumb and eyeballs, and if the term publisher means anything, then it means that at least.

In all of this, I suspect that you, Jim, were either hoping I would get stuck in a lease and have to knuckle under, or something like that, or else that I would eat the lease for my apartment or something and you'd tell the community that you had tried.

Well, because my short-term landlord was one of the people who'd reportedly been credit or debit card abused by Dennis, he got his ownership company to let me out of my lease no harm no foul other than losing the deposit.

So, it was bye-bye. You're going to claim I quit.

I still claim you fired me.

Thank doorknobs I'm not still there, though. Reportedly, Dennis is expanding or has expanded the ownership stake he had in Hearne/ Franklin, Marlin/Rosebud and Cameron/Rockdale. He might even be taking them over. 

I would throw up in my mouth if Dennis Phillips were my company owner. I would then puke that sloppy seconds on him.

A part two is ahead.