RefBan

Referral Banners

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Top Stories from the last 24 hours

The Next Web - Top Stories Today

More top stories on The Next Web »

Like to learn how to enable rapid growth for your company? Check out this great 'Growth Hacking' class by Joe Stump.

That's all for now.

Best,
TNW Team
 
Unsubscribe | Update subscription preferences
Copyright © 2013 The Next Web

How to Turn Your Hellhole of a Company Into a Great Place to Work

March 6th, 2013Top Story

How to Turn Your Hellhole of a Company Into a Great Place to Work

By Alan Henry

How to Turn Your Hellhole of a Company Into a Great Place to Work There are some companies people would kill to work for, and you probably know already whether yours is one of them. At some companies, people love coming in every day. At others, the paycheck is the only thing stopping the staff from burning the place down. If your company sounds like the latter, here's what you can do—at any level of the organization—to make your company a better place to work.

Being a great place to work goes deeper than high pay and great benefits: the work environment and attitude of the employees are important too. The best companies appreciate their workers and offer them benefits and perks that make them feel valued. They also train managers to work efficiently, treat their employees like adults, trust them to get their work done, and judge them on their performance. It all sounds logical, but if all companies were so above-board, everyone would love their jobs. Sadly, we know better.

In this guide, we'll walk you through some things you can do, whether you're entry-level, standard staff, middle management, or a manager, to make your company—or at least your team—more friendly. First, we need to discuss what makes a company great.

What Makes a Company a Great Place to Work?

How to Turn Your Hellhole of a Company Into a Great Place to Work Every year, tons of magazines and blogs publish lists of the "Best places to work." Many of them work with the Great Place to Work company to poll employees and evaluate the results. For example, the 2013 Best Companies to Work For list has been published, and you'll see some familiar names at the top of the list. Not all of them have the same things in common though. Great Places to Work says the criteria for a great place is simple:

Employees believe they work for great organizations when they consistently:

  • TRUST the people they work for;
  • Have PRIDE in what they do; and
  • ENJOY the people they work with.

It's important to note that a long list of benefits and perks does not a great company make. You can offer employees free lunches, tons of relaxation space, flexible work hours, and more, and they'll still hate working for you if they don't have the more basic needs met. Photo by Promisa Art Studio.

Great Places to Work goes into detail about this here, but the point is that if you're looking to make your company a better place, benefits and perks only go so far. They have to be used in a way that doesn't just make people happy for the moment, but reinforces the fact that they're appreciated, their work is appreciated, and they're working with people they like and trust. Keep that in mind while we walk through some of the things you can do to improve your workplace.

What You Can Do To Make Your Company a Better Place to Work

How to Turn Your Hellhole of a Company Into a Great Place to Work You don't have to be an executive or an HR director with a budget to make some basic changes that'll improve your work environment (although it helps.) Let's take a look at what you can do on any level of the company to improve things for yourself and your peers, your department, and the whole company. Photo by Russell Yarwood.

Entry Level, Non-Management, or Any Employee

At this level it might seem like there's nothing you can do—or nothing you'd be allowed to do—to brighten up your workplace. That's not always the case. We discussed a few things you can do for yourself when you feel like your job sucks, but there are other things you can do with your colleagues to make things better for everyone:

  • Start small and talk to your manager. Before you go too far, the first thing you should do is make sure that there's something you can do without upsetting your boss, or their boss. For example, your manager may be more than happy to help you organize a potluck lunch or something, but they probably can't cordon off part of your team's work space as an impromptu lounge. They may be able to give you some flexibility to work from home, but they can't make that change for everyone in the company, or maybe even your department. Let your boss know that morale is low and you'd like to do something to bring it up. See what's possible.
  • Break down the walls between your colleagues. Small social activities can go a long way. It sounds corny, but when they're genuine and meaningful (and most importantly, things that everyone wants to do versus things they feel forced to do because management is asking them to do them) they can brighten up a workplace and help foster the kind of trust and collaboration that the best companies have in droves. How you do this is up to you and your office—a lot of companies have potluck lunches, but why not turn it into a chili cookoff with a prize for the best pot? Better yet, have a panel of judges—make them all regular people judging managers' recipes. At my last company, we were all gamers, so every couple of months we all brought in our rigs, set up a small LAN, and held LAN parties. It's amazing how lobbing a grenade over a wall at your CIO makes you appreciate him more.
  • Organize and sit down with management. We're not talking about forming a union or anything, just making sure everyone's on board with a very small set of proposals that you think your manager or department head can help you with, and then see if they're possible. Start slow with small changes that you think will make the biggest impact for everyone, whether it's a place to eat lunch in peace that isn't your desk, a potluck luncheon every month, or something else small that will help everyone warm up to each other a little more. Whatever you do though, make sure its genuine: skip the trust falls and go for the things that people actually enjoy.

Middle Management or Senior Staff (eg, When You Speak, Your Boss Listens)

How to Turn Your Hellhole of a Company Into a Great Place to Work If you're the type of employee that has a little pull with your boss, you've been around for a couple of years and have some friends at work, or you're just in the position to suggest something bigger than a potluck, consider some more substantive changes:

  • Don't forget to start small. Just because you're more senior doesn't mean that you can just jump in feet first. Again, make sure you're clear on what you can and can't do, and start with some of the smaller suggestions. They can get your feet wet, show you how much resistance you'll run into, and whether or not anyone will actually appreciate the changes you're trying to make. You may get more traction starting with something small, like asking if a supply closet can get some lights, a table, and some comfortable chairs so you can have a comfortable place to eat lunch. That'll probably fly before you get a full-on lounge. Similarly, if you can't get a sandwich counter in the office, ask if anyone would care if you asked some local food trucks to come down to the building around lunch time—if you can get your colleagues to go with you, everyone wins: your coworkers get a treat, you get delicious food, your company is suddenly more attractive ("Yeah, we have food trucks come down from time to time,"), and a local business gets valuable customers. Photo by Robert Banh.
  • Suggest policies that encourage happier, more productive teams. See if your department could start a telework program, or ask if everyone can try working from home one day a week. There's been a lot of controversy about working remotely lately, but for most people and most companies, it's still a great option. Plus, it shows a lot of trust when management can say "Yes, we trust you to get your work done even if we can't see you doing it." That's huge, and its impact on individual workers can't really be minimized. If the work that your team does doesn't require you to have your butt in a seat or a physical presence in your working area for eight hours a day, it can go a long way. Telework is a great example here, but it's not the only one: starting a "bring your pet to work day" can help a lot assuming your office isn't dominated by people with allergies, for example.
  • How to Turn Your Hellhole of a Company Into a Great Place to Work Lead the charge. The key to making any place a better one is to be tenacious. You won't be able to just throw a suggestion at your manager or their manager and then walk away assuming it'll happen. You have to be willing to take the reins and do the work required. Bonus: you get to be a leader and show your commitment not just to a project, but to the company, which will go far with people who may not even be involved.

    An example: at my last job, when we moved into a new building, the company built on a bistro as well—a small cold counter where pre-made sandwiches and salads, delivered every morning, were sold to employees and there were plenty of tables for everyone to sit and have lunch. We even had a pair of fountain soda machines, an iced tea brewer, and an espresso machine. Pretty sweet, but none of them would have been there if people didn't ask for them and the CEO didn't agree. Ultimately it was our receptionist and a few others who led the charge in selecting the vendors who provided the sandwiches and salads: the side benefit being that whenever they came in to show off their culinary skills, everyone in the office got to benefit with a free lunch. You don't have to be an exec to help make those necessary decisions, and since the receptionist asked us all for our opinions about the food, we all had a role in making sure the food we got was food we would enjoy. Photo by Mike Beltzner.

Senior Management, Directors, Execs

How to Turn Your Hellhole of a Company Into a Great Place to Work If you're a real power broker in your organization, or you have the ability to influence company policy as a whole (or maybe just your own department), why not use it to make your team happier, and more attractive to new talent? After all, you will need to hire at some point, and your position will be much stronger if you can outline the ways that your team is one of the best teams in the company to work for. If they catch on, or the rest of the company takes notice, you could be responsible for something big that really does make the whole company a great place to work.

  • Chat with HR about the changes you'd like to make. You're not in this alone, and your HR department may be able to lend you some help when it comes to making the changes you'd like to make. Whether you want to give some people on your team the option of telecommuting, or you'd like to give your team a lunch area, you never know—instead of just turning a spare closet into a lounge, see if there are any empty spaces in the building that everyone could use, not just your department. Turn a conference room into an Xbox or Wii room for an hour or two every Friday. Also, if you're planning anything after hours, make sure you're not running afoul of any company policies or regulations around overtime or employee hours in the process. Photo by Tomas Quinones.
  • Don't force your team, let it happen naturally. If there's anything most employees have, it's a finely tuned BS detector. They know when you're doing something because you want to "improve morale and make the department more fun" versus you genuinely want them to be happier and have a good time. Err on the side of the latter, and don't judge your team if participation is low at the outset. If morale is low, you'll have a hard time getting people to stay late for a poker night when all they want to do is go home. Just make sure you get a few people and start building a core group that really does enjoy the activity you've planned. It'll grow organically from there as long as the doors are open and you invite people on a no-stress basis.
  • How to Turn Your Hellhole of a Company Into a Great Place to Work Shamelessly borrow policies from the best. Some of the perks and policies that make other companies a great place to work are actually surprisingly easy to implement. Granted, they'll differ based on the corporate culture you have and the type of work that you do (if you're a director in a shipping company, for example, the benefits at a tech company may not be work for you) but network with other directors at other companies. See what makes their teams successful and how they're handling the challenges of a team that's interested only in their paychecks. Make no mistake, some people will only ever be interested in their paycheck, but you all have to see each other for 40+ hours a week—the least you can all do is enjoy the time you spend together. Get in touch with other companies and managers that understand that and agree with you and see how they made it all work. Not only do you have the benefit of networking, you'll get some valuable insight you can bring back with you. Photo by AoStefan.
  • Build a better working environment from the inside out. Remember, Great Places to Work says that the best places don't just have a laundry list of perks, there's actually a sense of mutual trust and respect among employees, managers, and directors. It can be difficult to foster, and in many cases your HR department can help, but in the end you're the one who knows and leads your team. Treating your employees with fairness and respect, trusting them to do their jobs and evaluating them fairly on their performance, and encouraging them to help and work with one another will all go much further than speedy new computers and free lunches (although all of those things help too!)

Every Great Place to Work Has to Start Somewhere

Let's be honest: It's easier to just quit and find a company that has the perks that you like, or keep searching until you find a corporate culture where you really fit in than it is to actually make these small changes and try to improve your working conditions from the inside. It's why so many of us just give up when things start sucking and start looking for a new job.

Unfortunately, jobs are scarce these days in every industry, and everyone knows it. Sometimes it's better to put in a little effort to keep the one you have, and starting off small and slow like this is a great way to make the kinds of changes that will ultimately make your company not just better for you, but more attractive to other great talent. You need to be willing to stick to your guns, lead the charge, and go out on a limb to make the time you spend at work a little better for everyone. After all, you spend at least 40 hours a week (and many of you said you spend more than that) at the office. It should at least be an enriching experience.

Title photo made using Asa Wilson and Elnur.

Number of comments

I'm A Mormon. Pop Culture Often Mocks My Faith, But Fallout Treated It Right

March 6th, 2013Top Story

I'm A Mormon. Pop Culture Often Mocks My Faith, But Fallout Treated It Right

By Skip Cameron

I'm A Mormon. Pop Culture Often Mocks My Faith, But Fallout Treated It RightI'm a 31-year-old, fifth-generation Mormon (member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) from Salt Lake City, Utah and I love video games.

I've been playing since my parents brought home the original NES with Track & Field, Duck Hunt, and The Legend of Zelda. Unlike most of my friends I never "grew out" of video games and love them today as much or more than I did as a kid. Among my many loves (Demon's Souls, Half-Life 2, Total Annihilation, Mass Effect) stand two games I just can't get enough of: Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

I must say that I was surprised how my religion was featured in the most recent Fallout I played.

I had never heard of Fallout until 2010 when I noticed my friend's little brother had logged over 125 hours in Fallout 3 on his Steam account. Intrigued, I rented Fallout 3 and was instantly hooked in that rare and wonderful way that happens when you experience something truly new and wholly captivating. I plowed through it on my PS3. I would get up at 5:00am to play before the kids woke up and the work day started, logging some 40 hours in the 10 or so days it took me to complete the main story. When I returned the game I was dogged by how many locations and quests I had to leave unexplored and unfulfilled due to my limited rental window.

After building a gaming desktop for my birthday and getting both New Vegas and Fallout 3: GOTY on the Steam Summer Sale, I knew I was in for a pair of very special treats. I have since logged over 200 hours in Fallout 3 and another 130 in Fallout: New Vegas.

Mormons of the Wasteland

As a Mormon, I am much more accustomed to seeing my religion portrayed in unflattering and even disrespectful ways in entertainment media ("Fort Joe Smith" in Starship Troopers comes to mind, as does The Book of Mormon Broadway musical and HBO's Big Love series) than to seeing any positive or deferential representations. Hence, when I came across The Old Mormon Fort outside New Vegas it naturally piqued my curiosity as to how it would be featured. Would the game's developers at Obsidian take the well-worn road of clichéd irony by making The Old Mormon Fort some den of hypocritical debauchery or zealous extremism, or would they do something different?

I wasn't expecting anything necessarily pro-religion, let alone reverent. This is a Fallout game, after all.

I'm A Mormon. Pop Culture Often Mocks My Faith, But Fallout Treated It Right Photo via DesertUSA.com; screenshot by the author.

I was nevertheless surprised and impressed by what I found inside The Old Mormon Fort: a struggling but hopeful sanctuary for the lost and ill-fated souls of the Mojave wasteland. I found a people whose purpose very much in harmony with the aspirations of Mormonism and Christianity generally. (For those who may have heard otherwise, we Mormons worship Jesus Christ and consider ourselves Christians.) While Mormons weren't the ones running the show-it was the Followers of the Apocalypse who had set up shop there-their noble goals and purpose, connected as they were (at least nominally) to the Mormons, gave me a strong feeling of appreciation. They intrigued me.

I wanted to find out if there were more Mormon references in the Fallout universe, and were they as curiously sympathetic and respectful as this? Thanks to the exceptional collection of Fallout resources at falloutwiki.com—including numerous leaked documents from the pre-Obsidian studio Black Isle's cancelled alternate Fallout 3 project in which the Mormons of Vault 70 were going to figure rather prominently—I have been able to analyze Obsidian's Fallout Mormons from the perspective of a lifelong member, and am pleased to share what I found.

Some minor Fallout: New Vegas spoilers will follow

Joshua Graham: The Prodigal Son

I'm A Mormon. Pop Culture Often Mocks My Faith, But Fallout Treated It Right

Clearly the most significant Mormon character in the Fallout universe is Joshua Graham, also known as Malpais Legate and The Burned Man.

For those who don't know the lore, Joshua Graham was a Mormon missionary sent from New Canaan (post-apocalyptic Ogden, Utah) to preach to the tribes of Arizona. Like most real-life Mormon missionaries, Graham had to learn a new language in order to preach to the Arizona tribals and, like most real-life Mormon missionaries, was able to do so. I myself served a Spanish-speaking mission to the Mojave wastelands of San Bernardino county, California. And Utah boasts one of the highest concentrations of US-born polyglots-speakers of more than one language-in the country due to the Church's foreign missionary efforts, with 30% of Utah's male population and up to 75% of the students of the Church's Brigham Young University speaking a foreign tongue.

In the game, it appears that Graham's linguistic abilities may have been pivotal in the formation of Caesar's Legion. Graham had been sent from New Canaan to preach to the tribes of Arizona and had managed to master a number of the tribal dialects. Meanwhile, The Followers of the Apocalypse dispatched a research party from California to study the tribal languages that were emerging in the east. They met Graham along their way and enlisted his help as a translator.

Shortly thereafter, Graham and the Followers were captured by the Blackfoot tribe, one of the weakest of eight warring tribes in the region. Fearing they would be killed along with their captors, a Follower named Edward Sallow determined that to survive they needed to remake the tribals into a capable fighting force. With his knowledge of ancient Rome, Sallow enlisted Graham's linguistic talents to help him train the Blackfoot tribe in the ways of total war.

Sallow and Graham went on to lead the tribe in conquest after conquest, with both men ultimately forgetting or abandoning their humble and humanitarian beginnings and getting caught up in the violent rise to power of their new nation.

I take no offense at the story of Graham becoming Caesar's first Legate and actually thought it was exciting to have a Mormon figure so prominently in the history of one of Fallout's principal factions. One big reason for this was because his fall was precipitated by very human failings (fear of death, lust for power, pride, etc.), not a failing specific to his religion. Consequently, Graham becoming a ruthless villain doesn't feel like an attack on Mormonism any more than Caesar forming the Legion feels like an attack on the Followers of the Apocalypse (which it doesn't).

But it is Graham's life after the Legion that sheds light on another reason why I appreciate Obsidian's handling of Mormonism so much.

Obsidian avoids the lazy cliché of religious people being hypocritically unforgiving and intolerant.

After failing at the first battle of Hoover Dam, Caesar has Graham covered in pitch, set on fire, and thrown into the Grand Canyon. Graham, already renowned for his resilience as much as for his cruelty, survives. Stripped of power, title, and purpose, he returns to New Canaan filled with remorse for what he had become and for the shame he brought to his people.

Here again, Obsidian avoids the lazy cliché of religious people being hypocritically unforgiving and intolerant and has the Mormons of New Canaan forgiving the penitent Graham, embracing him as a returning prodigal.

I'm not sure if Obsidian was touching on the general theme of sin, repentance, and redemption common in most all of Christianity or if they looked more specifically at Mormon history, but this type of story played out repeatedly in the early history of the Mormon church. There were multiple times that high-ranking Church members betrayed Church leaders by swearing false affidavits (i.e. Mormons planned to overthrow the government) which resulted in repeated imprisonments and even near execution, only to later have the traitors return seeking forgiveness and finding it extended by a magnanimous prophet and people (see W. W. Phelps, Thomas B. Marsh, Oliver Cowdery).

Regardless of what inspired the plotline, once again I appreciated that the core Christian tenet of repentance, forgiveness, and redemption figured so prominently in the story of saint-turned-sinner-turned-saint, Joshua Graham.

As a fun side-note regarding the fictional Graham and a famous real-life Mormon, Fallout: New Vegas project lead J. E. Sawyer said in an online Q&A that one interesting aspect of Mormon history is that John Browning, inventor of the M1911 pistol, BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle), and M2 .50 Cal Machine Gun, was a Mormon from Ogden, Utah. Joshua Graham, perhaps in a show of hometown pride and religious camaraderie, seems to be quite a fan of Browning's M1911 .45 Caliber pistols.

"Elder" Bert Gunnarsson & Driver Nephi

I'm A Mormon. Pop Culture Often Mocks My Faith, But Fallout Treated It Right

Until I started writing this I had overlooked that Bert Gunnarsson was a Mormon (probably due to most of the Mormon-related dialogue not making the final cut of the game), but I certainly had my suspicions about Driver Nephi.

While the name Nephi will not likely carry any significance to anyone outside Utah or the Mormon Church, to those in the Church Nephi is the first author of The Book of Mormon. For Fallout players, however, Nephi is one of the three fiend leaders that NCR Major Dhatri asks The Courier to kill in the Three-Card Bounty quest.

Bert Gunnarsson, on the other hand, is a ghoul medic and Mormon working with the Followers of the Apocalypse. He can be found helping NCR Captain Parker care for the poor and needy of New Vegas at the Aerotech Office Park.

If you speak to Gunnarsson he reveals that he is ministering to the poor and needy of New Vegas and that he has some medical training from the Followers. However, the GECK (mod tool) reveals a number of lines of unused dialogue that more fully flesh out his character. In one of Bert's lines he explains that in the Church people call him "Elder Gunnarsson," the title borne by full-time missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, implying that Bert is a Mormon missionary.

Also cut from the final game was an option that allowed The Courier to ask Bert what brought him out of Utah, to which he replies, "Following a lost cause, I'm afraid. My old friend Nephi fell in with a bad crowd. Drug runners, raiders, probably worse things it's better not to dwell on. When his gang headed west, I followed. I thought perhaps I could turn him back to the Church." This obviously implies that the golf-club wielding fiend Driver Nephi is also a Mormon, albeit a seriously lapsed one.

Again, I find much to appreciate in these two characters and their stories. First of all, Bert Gunnarsson is a Swedish name. Scandanavia was the second most successful foreign mission in the early days of the Mormon church with 23,000 Scandanavian converts emigrating to Utah between 1852 and 1905. Consequently, Elder Gunnarsson may be a seventh- or eighth-generation Mormon, his ancestors perhaps dating back to those early Swedish converts. Did Obsidian know this historical tid-bit? I don't know, but their research into Mormonism so far seems to reflect a much deeper level of effort than is typically evidenced in entertainment media, so maybe they did.

I'm A Mormon. Pop Culture Often Mocks My Faith, But Fallout Treated It Right

Another way in which I feel Obsidian avoided a tired anti-religious cliché is in making Gunnarsson a ghoul.

In many media depictions, religious people are xenophobic and intolerant of the "other." In the Fallout universe, the group that most fits the persecuted "other" is the ghouls.

As Three Dog reminds us in Fallout 3, "For all you would-be bigots out there, ghouls are people too. See children, ghouls are simply humans who have been exposed to an ungodly amount of radiation and haven't had the good fortune to die...So if you meet one of the wasteland's many ghouls, leave your prejudice at the door, and your pistol in its holster." Three Dog reminds his listeners continuously about the unfair and apparently wide-spread anti-ghoul prejudice that exists among the humans of the wasteland. In this sense it is encouraging to see one of the only explicitly religious characters depicted as both a Mormon and a ghoul. This seems to indicate to me that the Fallout Mormons are not the xenophobic other-hating religious stereotypes featured in some media: Not only do they accept ghouls among their ranks but send them out as official representatives of the faith.

Lastly, it is poignant to me to think of this ghoul missionary following his wayward friend over 400 miles into the desert in the hopes that he might turn him from his self-destructive path.

It is poignant to me to think of this ghoul missionary following his wayward friend over 400 miles into the desert in the hopes that he might turn him from his self-destructive path.

In cut dialogue, Driver Nephi speaks ungenerously of his old friend and tells The Courier to tell Bert that he's never coming back to "his little cult." Bert admits to The Courier in another piece of cut dialogue that he was "never able to reach" Nephi, and that "drugs and hatred" have consumed him. In spite of this, it seems that Bert is determined to wait and hope for a change of heart that may lead his friend away from the fiends and toward redemption. Given that Bert is a ghoul and does not have an NCR bounty on his head, he likely knows he will outlive Nephi and seems willing to give as many of his long ghoul years as he must to offer his friend a lifeline back.

When death inevitably comes to Driver Nephi, likely at the hands of The Courier, if the player speaks to him Bert laments Nephi's passing (oddly, it would seem, given that all of the related dialog was cut) and expresses the hope that Nephi's soul is at peace.

"Elder" Bert Gunnarsson exemplifies the Mormon belief in the power of repentance and forgiveness, and that even someone as lost and sinful as the murderous Driver Nephi can be redeemed.

If you might indulge a film-based redemption analogy to further illustrate the point (*Pulp Fiction spoiler ahead*), it is as though Joshua Graham is Jules Winfield and Driver Nephi is Vincent Vega, with each of the former surviving a near-death experience and turning from their wicked ways to find forgiveness, and each of the latter persisting in their wicked ways and finding death.

Obsidian not only thoughtfully presents the concepts of repentance, forgiveness, and redemption in connection with Mormons but also the self-sacrifice, patience, and hope of the people seeking to extend those gifts to others as Mormon missionaries, like Elder Gunnarsson, work to do the world (or wasteland) over every day.

More Mormons of the Wasteland

There are a few other fair-minded Mormon Easter eggs in the Fallout universe, but they would take too long to explain and are relatively trivial compared to those presented here (but for those that are interested, see Jeremiah Rigdon, the rise and fall of New Jerusalem, Caesar's extermination order and Missouri Executive Order 44, Daniel from Honest Hearts and Ammon from The Book of Mormon).

I as a Mormon feel a deep sense of appreciation for the time and energy Obsidian clearly spent researching Mormonism historically, culturally, and spiritually.

Rather than taking the safe route in the entertainment industry of making Christianity, and especially Mormon Christianity, a punching bag or the butt of a string of jokes, Obsidian has shown that at least in post-apocalyptia, Mormons can get a fair shake.

Skip Cameron plays video games and goes to church in Boise, ID and has to make time to game before the sun and his kids are up. He posts screenshots of his adventures through the wasteland at viewfromravenrock.blogspot.com

Number of comments

Roger Ailes Is Exactly the Kind of Jerk You'd Expect the Head of Fox News to Be

March 6th, 2013Top Story

Roger Ailes Is Exactly the Kind of Jerk You'd Expect the Head of Fox News to Be

By Cord Jefferson

Roger Ailes Is Exactly the Kind of Jerk You'd Expect the Head of Fox News to BeRoger Ailes is the pallid, smirking, ultra-rich white guy who sits atop the unrepentant lie factory that is Fox News. A new book about Ailes, Roger Ailes: Off Camera, is due out this month, and Vanity Fair has an excerpt. Off Camera was written by Zev Chafets—the man behind a cheerleading 2010 Rush Limbaugh biography—and has been viewed as a would-be preemptive strike against another Ailes biography coming out this year, from New York contributing editor Gabe Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room: Fox News and the Making of America.

The theory goes that Ailes played nice with Chafets—allowing him close access and patience—in order to try and discredit Sherman's presumably less rosy work, which is already being systematically battered by Fox News anchors, who have called Sherman a "phony" and "a stalker" on air. A less narcissistic and thin-skinned man than Ailes might have given that project the opportunity to go the way of most other intensively reported biographies of media executives. But Ailes can't conceive of himself as being an unimportant or uninteresting subject, so we get the thunderstorm and a whole bonus book.

Whatever ulterior motives are behind it, Off Camera, the excerpt at least, is an interesting read. Not because it contains any left-field twists or turns, or because it illuminates anything you might not expect about Ailes (yes, he is nice to his kid, but so are a lot of people because that is what you're supposed to do). It is largely interesting because it confirms a lot of the suspicions you probably already have about Ailes: that he is a mean bully operating under an aloof detachment from reality. It's surprising because it's not surprising, like when you turn on the hot water, touch the hot water, and then yank back your hand. Yep, that's hot water, all right.

Roger Ailes is that parent who "barks instructions" at all the kids during school sports match-ups:

Zac [Ailes' son] was easily the tallest kid on the team, and when the action commenced, his father encouraged him to take advantage of it. "Don't get boxed out," he shouted. "Use your height. Hands up on defense!" Zac hit the first shot of the game, and Ailes clapped loudly and shouted his approval. But Zac's team, wearing red, was no match for the other school's. As they fell behind, Ailes grew tense, barking instructions at his son and the rest of the team, but the advice wasn't helping. During a time-out he extracted his BlackBerry for a quick peek at the standings. "Let's see if Fox News is still on the air," he said.

Back on the court, Zac caught a stray elbow to the eye. "Shake it off," Ailes yelled. "Rub it out! Back on defense! Get all over them! Come on, fellas, show some heart!" But sometimes heart isn't enough. At the final buzzer the score was 29–10.

Roger Ailes is the guy who mocks ethnic names:

He is plainspoken, wryly profane, caustic, and above all competitive, whether he is relating how he told NBC not to name its cable channel MSNBC ("M.S. is a damn disease") or, in an appearance before a student audience, trying to recall the name of a CNN anchor "named after a prison." (Soledad O'Brien.)

Roger Ailes is the rich, straight white guy who thinks America, if it had had "modest social amendments," was at its greatest in the '50s, a view that any number of minorities might take issue with:

He is a blue-collar guy from a factory town in Ohio who has stayed close to his roots. After I had known him for a while I asked what he would do if he were president of the United States. He said that he would sign no legislation, create no new regulations, and allow the country to return to its natural, best self, which he locates, with modest social amendments, somewhere in midwestern America circa 1955.

Roger Ailes responds to criticism with bristling insults:

One moment of tension occurred in 2010, when Matthew Freud, the husband of Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth and a powerful British public-relations executive, told The New York Times that "I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes's horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder, and every other global media business aspires to." ... Ailes mocked Freud in an interview in the Los Angeles Times, saying he couldn't pick the British flack out of a lineup and suggesting that he (a descendant of Sigmund Freud's) "needed to see a psychiatrist."

Roger Ailes likes intimidating people with his "tough guy" image, which sometimes finds him destroying things in a rage:

Ailes revels in his image as a tough-guy. He is fond of recalling rougher times, like the night he punched a hole in the wall of an NBC control room where he was producing The Tomorrow Show. "It was just a drywall, and luckily I didn't hit any beams. But somebody put a frame around the hole and wrote, don't mess with roger ailes. If you have a reputation as a badass, you don't need to fight."

Roger Ailes occasionally gets upset with people who dare to express anger when he smashes out the window of their pussy hybrid cars:

Ailes admits that he sometimes flies off the handle. This can happen pretty much anywhere. Not long ago, on a ball field near his place in Garrison, NY, his nephew accidentally hit a baseball through the window of a 2012 Prius parked in a church lot. The owners were Koreans who didn't speak much English, and they were extremely agitated. "It's just a damn window," Ailes told them. "I'll pay for the damn thing."

The owner was indignant. "We pray, you curse," he said.

"Fine," said Ailes. "Then let's pray over the fucking window. Maybe that'll fix it."

"It was a 10-minute incident that I turned into an hour," Ailes said when he told me the story. "Hell, it's lucky they didn't recognize me. It could have turned into a goddamn international scandal. But I told them I was sorry " He laughed. "Damn it, though, I was kind of glad that it was a Prius."

Even a broken jackass is right twice a day, of course, and Ailes appears to get something correct every now and again: "One day during the 2012 primary season, Newt Gingrich complained that Fox News's support for Mitt Romney was responsible for Gingrich's poor showing. ... Ailes was silent for a moment and then added, 'Newt's a prick.'"

[Image via AP]

Number of comments