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Open Discussion: Bob Dunning Terminated by Davis Enterprise Owners (an Al’s Corner Exclusive)

Adfc46d7-dadc-4553-a16a-0777ff3b922bIn a bozo move by the owners of the Davis Enterprise, Bob Dunning was terminated without so much as a thank you after 55 years of service to the paper (and Davis).

Shelley Dunning pays a very sweet tribute in a 7-minute video on her Facebook page:

facebook.com/shelleydunning

She also outlines how cold the termination was.  I doubt that will sit well with the Davis community.

Bob's column will continue at: 

thewaryone.com

Please share your thoughts here in comments regarding this poorly-handled move by the owners of the Davis Enterprise.

Full disclosure:  Bob Dunning once wrote a column about how I should be on the City Council 😐

Note:  Pardon the pictured haircut, Bob, this is what A.I. gave me when I described the incident!

Posted by

Alan C. Miller

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Comments

18 responses to “Open Discussion: Bob Dunning Terminated by Davis Enterprise Owners (an Al’s Corner Exclusive)”

  1. Peter Buggy

    I am shocked! I wondered what was going on when I read Wednesday’s paper because the first place I go is to The Wary I and to my surprise there was no column and no note that Bob was on vacation. This past year the Enterprise has really gone downhill. No local office, real estate from Solano Co, fewer days and it’s rumored that delivery service will cease and be replaced by mail which means the Sunday paper will arrive on Monday. It’s all very sad and will force us to drop our subscription and rely exclusively on Bob’s substack, the Davisite and Next Door for local community news!

    Reply
  2. darelldd

    The haircut doesn’t freak me out nearly as much as the 3-fingered right hand, and 6-fingered left hand. The opposable thumbs have to be assumed, since the paper is being held. But we don’t know how many are back there.

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  3. Alan C. Miller

    PB say: ” . . . and rely exclusively on Bob’s substack, the Davisite and Next Door for local community news!”
    Oh God, please don’t rely on the Davisite, especially not Al’s Corner!
    But please, stay subscribed to the Enterprise. They have some really good reporters there, despite the general deflation of the paper. It’s not looking good, but I greatly hope the Enterprise survives, and I’ll stay subscribed myself.
    I’m afraid de-subscribing would end up punishing the remaining staff instead of the bozos.

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  4. Keith

    “It’s all very sad and will force us to drop our subscription and rely exclusively on Bob’s substack, the Davisite and Next Door for local community news!”
    What, not the Davis Vanguard? I’m floored…

    Reply
  5. Keith

    So Bob Dunning has a blog.
    I’ve noticed that over the last few years Dunning has become more PC in his articles.
    Hopefully, since Bob now doesn’t have to worry about offending Davis liberals anymore, he will go back to when he would write some conservative leaning columns.
    No more PC articles and start roasting a few of the over woke Davis liberals/progressives.

    Reply
  6. Roberta L. Millstein

    ACM writes: “Oh God, please don’t rely on the Davisite, especially not Al’s Corner!
    But please, stay subscribed to the Enterprise. They have some really good reporters there, despite the general deflation of the paper. It’s not looking good, but I greatly hope the Enterprise survives, and I’ll stay subscribed myself.
    I’m afraid de-subscribing would end up punishing the remaining staff instead of the bozos.”
    That’s pretty much how I feel, although there is part of me that hopes that DE folds and that all of the great journalists it let go over the years (some of whom have been commenting on NextDoor about Bob being summarily dismissed) join forces and create a new and better newspaper — maybe a non-profit, maybe in concert with Davis Media Access? (A non-profit actually grounded in journalism, like Democracy Now — it can be done, despite local examples to the contrary). I just throw that out there for the universe to consider.
    As for Bob’s dismissal, he’s being treated shoddily and deserves better after 55 years of earnest work. I often disagreed with his columns but think he plays an important role in the community and the newspaper (as I have said on NextDoor and Facebook).

    Reply
  7. Ron O

    I watched the video (from his wife, I assume) one time. It strikes me as more-emotional than it should be (from the perspective of someone not so invested in it), but yeah – I would have honored him more in some manner. In my own case, I never had a particularly “warm-and-fuzzy feeling” regarding any of my former employers, though I wasn’t with them for multiple decades. Those days are behind us, as a society. (Ask any of the laid-off tech workers.)
    Bob Dunning himself is a talented, somewhat humorous writer, though I was never much interested in how whatever local sports team was doing (including UCD’s teams). Couldn’t care less, for that matter.
    But overall, this seems to be more related to a lack of profitability (due to the Internet), compared to the “old days” of newspapers. One would think that they’d be able to survive from online advertisements, but I guess not. Probably the reason that the Vanguard continues to beg for money, despite its pursuit of online advertisements.
    I stopped reading the Enterprise about a year or so ago, when they clamped-down on the ability to read it for free. Apparently, that’s how cheap I am.
    But again, this is not limited to the Enterprise, and affects all of what we used to call newspapers. Personally, I like to read articles from multiple sources via the Internet, and I’m not going to be paying for each one of them.

    Reply
  8. South of Davis

    I have not subscribed to the Enterprise in almost 15 years and I don’t know (and have not heard of) a single person under 60 in town that gets the paper.
    Newspapers (and LP records) were a big part of my life for years, but the days of “most” people we know reading (and paying for) an actual paper (or listening to a LP record) are gone.
    With so much free information (and music) out there it is going to get harder and harder to get people to pay for information and music. It is hard to cover costs today even if you just have interns cut and paste the work of others in between the same story about a housing shortage under ads from developers.

    Reply
  9. Keith

    My only regret is that I had already cancelled my Enterprise subscription years ago so I can’t have the pleasure of doing it now.

    Reply
  10. Don

    The conservative cancel culture reached the ownership of the Enterprise. I’m cancelling my subscription to the Davis Enterprise.

    Reply
  11. Roberta L. Millstein

    To follow up on my own earlier comment: apparently Davis Media Access is already thinking about ways to fill the vacuum that is increasingly left by the Davis Enterprise.
    https://davismedia.org/content/statement-local-media-davis-media-access

    Reply
  12. Keith

    “The conservative cancel culture reached the ownership of the Enterprise.”
    The conservative cancel culture? I’ve always thought that cancel culture came from the left.

    Reply
  13. Ron O

    I don’t think that Dunning was canceled due to his views.
    More likely related to Benjamins. (Or even just the Washingtons.)
    Still don’t know why newspapers are having such difficulty these days, since there’s essentially no distribution/material cost online. And yet, there’s still advertising dollars to be had.
    I guess platforms such as Facebook make their money by sharing data with advertisers. But it still comes down to advertising, paying the bills – for Twitter and YouTube as well. Newspapers apparently didn’t catch on to that. It’s like watching Sears go out of business, while Amazon is probably still growing.
    Meanwhile, newspapers keep trying to come up with ways to force paid subscriptions, which doesn’t seem to be working-out well enough for them.
    And Tik Tok makes their money by . . .

    Reply
  14. Maria

    As his columns grew increasingly taciturn and contrarian over the years I lost interest. Maybe I’m biased having endured a lot of taciturnity and to be honest, arrogant localism growing up in Davis, but it all made sense when my aunt told me she’d passed him on the street one day walking her bike and he made some snide unsolicited comment like, “You’re supposed to ride it.” We were both kind of laughing like what a jerk but not surprising. This was sometime in the late 90s. As far as his wife’s editorials I read the weirdest article back in 2015? That she wrote about this prank where she deep fried cotton balls for her kids and grandkids and it was some kind of family tradition? I thought I’d heard enough but I can’t imagine what the editorial staff at the Enterprise has been going through the last 30 years…Davis can be excruciatingly insular. That’s my take. If the Enterprise folds it’s okay because the Sacramento Bee is phenomenal. Have a happy retirement Mr. Dunning you’ll be fine.

    Reply
  15. Alan C. Miller

    I don’t think Maria likes fried cotton balls.

    Reply
  16. Keith

    “passed him on the street one day walking her bike and he made some snide unsolicited comment like, “You’re supposed to ride it.”
    I think most people would call that a “joke”.

    Reply
  17. Roberta L. Millstein

    While most of the attention is rightly on Bob, since Shelley was mentioned let me take the opportunity to say what a gorgeous writer she is. She is one of those people who is able to take any topic and weave the most engaging story out of it. Her writing is absolutely gorgeous. I presume she has been “let go” as well and so that is another loss for the DE.

    Reply
  18. DESMOND ANSEL JOLLY

    Ditto on Shelley’s skills as a writer.

    Reply

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