An open letter to Mr. David Swanson

“It’s business as usual at R.H. Donnelley today and it will be (in the future.)” David Swanson, CEO

No it’s not David and you should have listened to us over the past few years. Your statements do not sit well with me. “I wish it would have turned out differently,” “No one could have put this into their economic modeling,” and “We just could not have anticipated the severity of the economic downturn.” Of course you wish it would have turned out differently, you’re bankrupt. But it’s the “no one could have put this into their economic model” and especially the, “we just could not have anticipated the severity of the economic downturn” that really gets to me.

We have been telling you for years that Local Online Marketing was the way of the future and the Yellow Pages would go the way of the dodo. You refused to listen.

But the coup-de-grass has to be your most recent epiphany; “Our growth-through-acquisition strategy never anticipated the cataclysmic collapse of the U.S. economy and the local advertising market.”

Stop right there.

First, ‘cataclysmic’ is how you would describe the housing market over the past few years. Cataclysmic is not how you describe the advertising and marketing industry in which we work. You and I know that was a veiled attempt to draw the focus away from the last part of your admission, “…the local advertising market.”
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