Lauren Stich
 

Lauren Stich has been let go by the Daily Racing Form. She is the latest budget cut victim at the paper. Her last column is in today's edition. I spoke with Lauren this morning and she is understandably upset.

If anyone else is as dissapointed in this decision as I am and wants to make their feelings known, you can send an email to the 3 people who made this
decision:

Rich Rosenbush, Editor (rrosenbush@drf.com)
Brent Diamond, CEO (bdiamond@drf.com)
Steven Crist, Chairman& Publisher (scrist@drf.com)

Hopefully, if enough people write in, they will reconsider this terrible decision.

Paul

They've removed the sibling summaries from their pp's and now this... The product just keeps getting noticably crappier with every "budget saving" move they make... :mad:

emails are enroute... I seriously may not renew my subscription

Maybe lowering the online subscription rates or having more subscription options would increase numbers?

I dunno.

:rolleyes:

Steve and Lauren discussed this a couple weeks ago on ATR, and I agree, it's a real shame.
She's built a solid reputation in the industry, and will surely find avenues to work within. It's just too bad she was a victim of budget cuts after being with DRF for so long.

I enjoyed her pedigree analysis, if anything it brought a little variety to the publication.

I like her columns, but she owes me $14.95 for the book that wasted 4 hours of my life

!!OOOOOOOOOO!!

Maybe they're in the process of starting a Pedigree Ann Blog?

I'm sorry for Lauren, and like her a lot, and I'm all for the rights of people to voice their displeasure with any decision but I'm not sure it's fair to label those three people as the ones who " made this decision. "

Didn't DRF just get bought or something, that would probably be who to target....

Removing the sibling summaries was a really dumb idea, imo. They have all the 'breezefigs' and other products that I don't waste my time with. Sib summaries are really helpful in the baby races.

Dan Illman is the Pedigree Guru at DRF

Not compared to Lauren. . . Illman is more of an all-around handicapper compared to her. He does a lot of the baby stuff but she's the pedigree expert.

and she is great every monday at 6 on the sirius show!

she's great with steve on the radio show. unfortunatly i've not read her colums but then i've not been able to buy a DRF locally for almost 2 years.

Here's a pretty lame response from Steven Crist when interviewed by John Kelly on the Leroy's Sports Hour in Las Vegas on April 11. He was asked about Lauren leaving DRF:

http://96.227.210.29:8080/audio/Leroys20080411.mp3

Not sure why you think that response was lame. . .

Crist: "I hope she'll still write for us when she's able to."

What the hell is that supposed to mean. They just let her go.

Maybe you should ask yourself what he might have been trying to tell you.

Just because she is no longer employed by them, doesn't mean she can't do freelance work for them in the future.

I guess this was over my head but I have no idea what he was trying to tell us.

Paul

it makes sense. not on the payroll, but can freelance-meaning no benefits, workmens comp, ss tax, etc paid out by drf. it's a way to trim their budget. she won't be an employee, would be considered a sub-contractor so to speak.
kind of like coca cola planning to get out of vending. they'll still have the machines, but they'll sell the cokes to a middle man. they still make money, but won't have the employees to pay to fill the machines-that'll be on the middle man.

How old is Lauren?

Maybe she has some personal issues?

I can tell you from speaking with her that this came out of the blue and was not her decision in any way.

Paul

People lose jobs everyday in this country. It's Bush's fault

:)