The Associated Press as well as our friends at the Riverfront Times and STLMedia are all reporting that St. Louis’ newest media entrant, the Globe Democrat, is losing their sports staff.

“Why?” You ask, tilting your head slightly to the right like a little puppy.

Well dear reader, when you don’t pay your employees, they tend to hate your guts and then usually choose to stop working for you.

Sports editor Rob Rains announced Tuesday the entire sports staff of Globe-Democrat.com had resigned effective Wednesday to pursue other opportunities, leaving the future of the website in doubt. Staffers have not been paid since May 15.

Rob’s son, BJ Rains also worked at the struggling website but managed to jump ship earlier this summer going to work for Fox Sports Midwest and InsideSTL. Leaving towards the end of May, at the time BJ was glowing about his time with the Globe Democrat…granted he had only not been paid for about 2 weeks at that point, so maybe he was still in that “Oh my check will be a little late. I believe them.” phase.

Say it with me: You can’t do the newspaper business the old way anymore. You have to be lean and the Globe started out emulating the “old way” right from the beginning. If the big guys can barely hold water working that way, why did Daniel Rositano, owner of the Globe, think he could with an effectively brand new operation?!  We just don’t get it.

In other news bidding for globe-democrat.com should start up any time now. It has a lame dash in the middle of it, but we’d imagine you could still do something special with it. Those girls pooping in that cup where popular, you could do something like that maybe.

More: “Globe Democrat: We’re Doing Fine, but Laying Off People Anyway“

First Deanne Lane, then Cordell Whitlock, who’s next to leave local NBC affiliate KSDK?  Apparently it could be anyone because our source says they are all pretty pissed:

…morale is way down there because of forced pay cuts everyone had to take last year.  That’s why you’ve seen several resignations there in the last year and you’ll likely see a few more.

This recent reports matches what much of what me and others have heard for a while now:  No one is happy there.  We aren’t just talking about “I work in a dying media that is run by morons” pissed off, this is really pissed off.

All signs point to more and more senior people hitting the door and you getting told about the progress of Highway 40 by a 21 year old guy like this.

STLMedia is reporting that from a source that says:

A reliable source says he turned in his resignation today.

My first thought was “Wow, takes stones to quit a job in news these days.”  my second question was “Who the hell is Cordell Whitlock?”

Oh yeah.