May I have a word? Rejuvenation

Eighteen former employees of The Dallas Morning News filed an age discrimation lawsuit against the DMN and Belo Corporation. The complainants allege that DMN stereotyped older employees as being inflexible and unable to adapt to new technology, and unlikely to accept changes based on marketing "focus groups" rather than excellent, ethical journalism. The complaint charges DMN with deliberately hiring younger writers to "rejuvenate" the newspaper and appeal to younger readers. The eighteen charge DMN with targeting employees over age 40 in a reduction-in-force in 2004.

It sounds like maybe the DMN executives knew pretty much what was wrong with the newspaper, except they wrongly attributed the failings to the age of the employees. The housecleaning needed at the DMN was not limited to any one age group. The whole newspaper, top to bottom, was in need of "rejuvenation." Rejuvenation is the phenomenon of vitality and freshness being restored, as in "the annual rejuvenation of the landscape" (wordnet.princeton.edu). Landscapes need it annually and it has nothing to do with the age of the gardener. Newspapers need it periodically, too, and it has nothing to do with the age of the staffers in the newsroom.

Those eighteen complainants might have a case against the DMN for workplace discrimination based on age. Ironically, that doesn't necessarily mean they should still be working there. Firing all the DMN employees because of the poor product they turned out would have been defensible.