From Paternalism to Cynicism: Narratives of a Newspaper Company

This article examines the stories told by employees in a 160-year-old newspaper production and publishing company, the Courier. Over 100 interviews with employees of the newspaper company (past and present) were carried out over a six-year period during which the Courier was undergoing major change, including the move from a local to a national newspaper. In this article, I organize these stories into four narrative constructions ('paternalism', `profit', `career' and `cynicism') which represent different ways of thinking about organizations, variously emphasizing family and community, competition and prohibition, publicity and success, and injustice and deception.