Thu, Oct 5th, 2023 - 9:43am
May 12, 2020 - 5:00pm | By Chris Larson
New information is out today regarding Saturday’s walkout of employees at Vinyl Taco’s downtown location in Fargo.
Lance Thorson, co-owner of Vinyl Taco, says he has now seen 100 screenshots from a group of people who were planning the walkout, which was unknown to store management. He says the group was planning to “do this secretly and were not planning to come out and do it in the public.”
One of the group members said, in a message, that, if the group had publicly stated they went to the Forum newspaper, that “management will have time to form a rebuttal, and find any way to (expletive) us over … If we give away the element of surprise, we lose all our cards.”
When asked if he believes there was “collusion,” Thorson says yes. He says there are text messages between a reporter of the Fargo Forum and Michael Scotch, dating back to last Thursday afternoon. The reporter had agreed to do a story, but never reached out to management, until Saturday morning.
“Their (the former employees) entire hope was to blindside all of us,” Thorson said. “They had no intent of coming to us.”
Thorson says attempts to reach Forum Communications representatives, including CEO of Forum Communications, Bill Marcil Jr., and Forum Editor-In-Chief Matt Von Pinnon had been unsuccessful. He says he wants to talk to Forum Communications executives about the journalism displayed during the ordeal.
When reached for comment by WZFG Radio’s Scott Hennen, who hosts What’s On Your Mind, Von Pinnon, on Monday, wrote: “After you alerted me to your morning conversation, I listened to the recording on your website. The fact that the restaurant workers told us of their plans to walk out before they told their employer does not make it "staged news." We reached out to Vinyl Taco's managers and owners for comment and did not publish a story until we had comments from the manager. After owner Lance Thorson got back to us, we updated the story with his comments, too. As always, we tried to be fair and accurate.”
