Bill Shaner Fired By Telegram And Gazette A Week After Posting Anti-Cop Rhetoric And Threats To Invade Holden With Antifa
A week ago today I published a blog about Worcester Telegram and Gazette “reporter” Bill Shane’s bizarre postings on social media about leading an Antifa invasion of Holden, and several incendiary posts about cops.
He played it off as if being called out wasn’t getting to him (even though it clearly was), and when asked what his bosses were doing about his postings he said, “absolutely nothing.”
Getting turtleboy’d is just straight up hilarious now what a good day
— Bill Shaner (@bill_shaner) June 13, 2020
Absolutely nothing lol
— Bill Shaner (@bill_shaner) June 13, 2020
Turns out they did, because Bill was fired today.
Today I quit Worcester Magazine and launched a substack on which I will continue the mission of making everyone in this city mad at me. I’m terrified!! Let’s go!! https://t.co/sd2oSChFv9
— Bill Shaner (@bill_shaner) June 19, 2020
He claims he quit, but it’s pretty clear from his sad goodbye blog that they finally grew tired of his antics and told him he was fired. They were obviously sick of his unprofessionalism, and all the anti-cop stuff was the last straw. I haven’t busted out the TB graveyard in years because I ran out of plots a long time ago, but I had to make room for Billy for old times sake, because it’s been so satisfying to ruin him.
He’s just such an awful, untalented, disgusting person. I’m convinced at this point that he’s a 29 year old virgin who doesn’t know how to talk to women, and isn’t clean enough to experiment with homosexuality. He is by far the worst “reporter,” I’ve ever seen, and his obsession with yours truly was unhealthy. He wrote about me close to 100 times, and then tried to pretend that I was irrelevant. He got caught in this Twitter echo chamber of radicals and former TB foes like Tracy Novick, Kevin Ksen, and Cara Berg-Powers, who told him he was a great reporter, and thus he never had any reason to improve his craft. At the end of the day he was just your run of the mill social justice warrior from the suburbs with someone else’s platform but no good scoops.
His goodbye blog is so sad and pathetic that I had to share some of it.
Today I am resigning from Worcester Magazine.
Nah, your ass got fired because of Turtleboy, and your editors got sick of dealing with a child who dressed like he just got back from Bonnaroo.
I am resigning because for the past two weeks editors at the Telegram & Gazette, which basically puts out Worcester Magazine now, have not allowed my column to run. In these columns I criticized the way the City Council has handled the thousands of calls from the community to defund the Police Department. I also criticized the Police Department for its handling of the body camera pilot program, or lack thereof. I criticized a racist business owner in Worcester who threatened to shoot Black Lives Matter demonstrators. I raised an eyebrow at Clark University’s decision to hire a lawyer with deep connections to City Hall for its supposedly independent review of the Police Department’s force march of demonstrators down Main Street a few weeks ago.
Translation – I whined and whined about racism, I tried to use the Telegram’s platform to smear small business owners as “racist,” and I dug into irrelevant things no one outside of my bubble cares about. Then I threw a hissy fit when they wouldn’t publish my word salad abortion.
I’m sad and exhausted. I truly loved working at Worcester Magazine. It was a job I thought I could continue doing for a long time. But the publication has been put through hell during my three years there. Picked apart and stomped on by a vulture capital firm that has demonstrated a cold ambivalence toward the mission of community journalism.
Translation – I’m a scab who took my friend Josh Lyford’s job and kept working for these “vulture capitalists” because I’m a sellout too.
Local journalism institutions across the country are being systematically destroyed by hedge funds which see a profit to be made in managing and accelerating decline. Every year, there are fewer and fewer reporters covering Worcester.
No, local journalism institutions are being destroyed by crappy, ideologically driven reporters who don’t give the public anything they can’t read in USA Today or CNN. Meanwhile, independent media outlets like TB have put you out of business by uncovering local stories better than you could ever dream to.
We have a school system that does not teach its children sex education. That deserves serious interrogation.
You spent 6 months trying to push for a bizarre sex ed program where kids hide condoms on their bodies and cup each other’s scrotums. No one read it because no one cares what you think.
We have school leadership that stubbornly dismissed credible accusations of outright racism and the story just went away. That deserves serious interrogation.
There were no credible accusations. It was like 5 kids being propped up by activists like yourself, making up nonsense that they couldn’t prove because they didn’t like the superintendent.
We have a wide community push to rethink the way we fund our police department, and the City Council callously waved it off before approving the budget as-is. That deserves serious interrogation.
We get it Billy – you hate the police.
There are also plenty of people who believe, rightly, that there is no such thing as objectivity – that bias bleeds through every decision an author makes, and that it is better, therefore, to be up front about where you stand. I am biased against racists and authoritarians and grifters and the feckless middle-of-the-roaders who facilitate them. At Worcester Magazine, I have always been up front about where I stand, and Worcester Magazine let me do that. Until two weeks ago.
Translation – I’m a virtue signaling twat who gets off on calling other people racist. I genuinely hate people who aren’t radicals like me, and I blame centrists for being level headed and normal. It’s also why I’m now unemployed.
It’s really good for a city to have reporters who are willing to be more antagonistic to the powers that be and more willing to cover the sort of stuff going on in the community that doesn’t, for whatever reason, make it into the paper of record. At WoMag, we gave the city hell for the surprise demolition of the Worcide community skatepark. We threw up off a roof in Brooklyn with a thrash metal band and wrote about it.
Yea, no one cares about how you thew up off a roof while living out your failed dream as a heavy metal rock star in Brooklyn. The guy who actually did work uncovering stuff going on in the community was yours truly. Unlike you I got Mosaic Cultural Complex defunded while you wrote stories about hiding condoms in kids.
We told a nasty, hateful, racist local blogger to kindly eat shit sir and oh yeah by the way good luck hiding your identity now, bitch.
Be more bitter Billy. You can’t. I am everything you will never, ever be. I’m self-made, independent, and don’t have to answer to a team of editors. You wish you could do what I do, but you’re just not talented, entertaining, interesting, hard working, or creative enough to do so. You never told me to “eat shit.” Instead you wrote every week about how you knew who I was, like anyone cared. I dropped the anonymous thing around 2016, so I’m not the least bit scared by your veiled threat there at the end about hiding my identity, bitch. I can’t tell you how satisfying to know that even in his “I’m fired” manifesto, Billy still felt the need to write about me. I literally own his brain.
I still love Worcester and care about it and I want to continue to write about it, so I’m going to do that. I’m going to do it here, on this website. A couple times a week. I’m going to continue the gonzo experiment of blending opinion and reporting. I’m going to tell you just how I feel, but I’m also going to turn you on to stuff you should be paying attention to.
Yea, Clive McFarland tried that after I put him the graveyard too. How’d that work out?
I’m going to stick up for the people who need to be stuck up for and stick it to the people who could use a good stick every now and again. I’m also going to write nice things about kind and/or cool people doing kind and cool things in Worcester.
Sounds riveting, can’t wait.
You’ll never once hear me talk about systemic racism as if it is a matter of opinion and not objective fact.
So edgy. This man is unrestrained sex appeal.
I’m taking a huge risk with this because I have bills to pay, obviously. And I’m also ruining my chance of a career in traditional journalism but I never really stood a chance anyway if we’re being real.
Billy, you never had a career in journalism, and you ruined your chance at getting a job anywhere else due to the way you present yourself and the insane things you say on Twitter. You’re also closing in on 30, and you’re not very good at your job, which will make journalism difficult for you.
I have another job that wants to give me more hours and I’m not broke right now and I’ve been broke before I can handle it.
Billy, I can pay you more than Starbucks can, but you’ll have to shine my shoes and pick up my dry cleaning. Let me know if you’re interested.
Bill is going to keep writing on his blog and wants you to give him $5 a month to do so. Or you could just read the Huffington Post or Vox for free and get the same thing from someone who has showered in the last 48 hours.
Just understand this Billy – I won. Never, ever forget that.
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