When we read Lewis Samuels’ little post about Billabong CEO Paul Naude getting barreled while the surf industry collapses around us we chuckled to ourselves at how much fun biting the hand stories are to write. It always reminds us of that old 70s T-shirt with the mouse causually, defiantly flipping off the incoming hawk.
According to his blog, Post Surf, Lewis felt the talons on Friday March 20, 2009 when he was fired by Surfline.
So the word came down from the higher-ups at Surfline that my signed contract for 2009 was no longer being honored. They specifically cited two incidents that led to my termination.
1) My Transworld post, in which I mocked one of their competitors for catering to advertisers, but in fairness noted “I get paid to write for Surfline, a website that also licks advertisers’ balls, part of the machine.”
2) The “Corporate Rage” post, in which I mused that in light of recent incidents like the AIG scandal, “perhaps this is the wrong time for any CEO to publicize 100 Tavarua tubes.”
I also want to clear up one point: Many people will falsely surmise that Billabong and/or their CEO put pressure on Surfline, and this led to me being fired. Surfline made it clear to me that this is not the case. In fact, they claimed that no advertisers have contacted them with anything except positive feedback about PostSurf. . . So… As to any lingering questions concerning whether Surfline licks advertisers’ balls or not — I think we’ve pretty much cleared that one up.
Right. Thanks for clearing that up. We never would have surmised anything of the sort because we know that the action sports industry loves great, honest writing and they always have.
http://www.boardistan.com/?p=6695#ixzz0IsBar8Zp&D
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