Selling your staff

The recession has been particularly severe on the media industry – and nowhere has it been felt harsher than at the The Guardian Media Group, publisher of the Guardian and the Observer.
In fact, the company is so hard up that it's now trying to charge staff for an investigative reporting master class run by, er, two of the group's own reporters.
“SPECIAL OFFER FOR GUARDIAN/OBSERVER/ONLINE JOURNALISTS,” screams the email to staff. “David Leigh and Nick Davies are running a masterclass in investigative reporting in London on Saturday week. Tickets for only £75. That's for the whole class, which is a full-on, all-day, intense deal; plus tea and coffee and good things to eat during breaks; plus handouts; plus the mighty party afterwards with a considerable amount of free alcohol. The normal price is £125, but there are some seats unsold so they're on offer at this insanely cheap rate.”
Such generosity!

Media news...

How's Alan "Rubbisher" Rushbridger's dream of global web glory for The Guardian coming along?
The newspaper has just fired all of its local Washington reporters as part of a cost cutting drive, but perhaps that's just a, er, temporary setback.
The six staffers - all Americans recruited on short-term contracts to crack the US online market for the media group - got their marching orders yesterday, I understand.
The paper, and its sister The Observer, are now just going to have to make do with their old newspaper hacks, who never understood what those web people were doing in the first place...