I try my best NOT to write about the newspaper business much in this blog. Part of the reason is because I was a newspaper editor for 20 years and just feel there are better things to write about. But it’s also because newspapers (specifically, newspaper owners and managers) are so screwed up that I could blog about them just about every day.

Sometimes the level of management idiocy in newspapers is so over the top that it’s hard for even me to ignore—like the dumb, demoralizing stuff coming out of the mouth of media magnate Sam Zell, or before that, the petty politics and bickering between the staff of the Los Angeles Times and its Chicago-based executives.

Those pale in comparison with this one, though: how MediaNews’ Los Angeles News Group (owned and operated by Dean Singleton) is constantly forcing many of its workers to move from office to office around Southern California, according to blogger and former L.A. MediaNews sports columnist Paul Oberjuerge.

As he puts it, “More than 100 full-time newsroom professionals have been ordered to report to a job site different than the one they were hired at. Sometimes 44 miles away. And some have been moved as many as three times in a year. All in the name of (phantom) efficiencies and all with the unstated but overt threat of do it or get out. To make this clear: Employees were hired by the Tribune or Daily Bulletin or Sun … then later told (years and years later, in some cases) their jobs now were located in another newsroom in another city, and tough luck if it causes upheaval in your life.”

If talent is as important as so many businesses say it is, well, this is not a good way to treat your people unless your real goal is something else entirely. My cynical side immediately goes there—this is just a way to wear down people you want out and get them to leave without having to pay any severance. That may be the ultimate goal, but it could also be the work of brain-dead managers who have little talent for planning or realize the consequences of their actions. Or, it could be a little bit of both.

This is a great way to demoralize a workforce, better even than Sam Zell telling some of his people that “all of you are overhead.” It is also a great candidate for next year’s Stupidus Maximus Award that I give out recognizing “the most ignorant, shortsighted and dumb workforce management practice of the year.”

I just awarded the first Stupidus Maximus Award to Circuit City “for the decision to fire 3,400 experienced salespeople, or 9 percent of its workforce, because they were making too much money, replacing them with cheaper, less-experienced personnel.” 

That was pretty bad, I thought, but the MediaNews decision to jerk around workers by continually forcing them to report to work at different places in Southern California without any real concern for what that decision is doing to their lives may actually top what Circuit City did.

Can you top this one for management idiocy? Maybe so. And if that’s the case, please let me know. I’m always looking for Stupidus Maximus nominees, so feel free to make them here as a blog comment or e-mail them to me at jhollon@workforce.com.