Plenty of New Yorkers are familiar with Sleepy's, the Manny Noriega-esque monopoly on mattresses. They suck! And a longtime Hartford Courant consumer affairs columnist was fired from the paper, who they advertised with, possibly for saying and proving so.

How's this for small-town journalism? The Hartford Courant - who recently underwent a serious change in management - just canned their columnist, consumer advocate George Gombossy, for reporting on the shitty, widespread practices of awful Mattress retailer Sleepy's. According to him:

So says The Consumerist:

...what did he do to justify being shown the door? The last column, which the paper refused to run, is about a Connecticut Attorney General investigation into mattress emporium Sleepy's. The chain is accused of selling used mattresses as new, and-even worse-selling used mattresses infested with bedbugs as new. Ew.

Ew, indeed! Just as gross is the fact that while, yes, newspapers are struggling to survive, their integrity is going to be compromised by owners dictating investigative content about their advertisers. Conflicts of interest: they happen.

Meanwhile, Sleepy's still sucks: I have my own Sleepy's horror story, but it's not nearly as bad as some of the ones very easily Googled, or the stories from the consumers Gombossy advocated for. Not only are they delivering shitty, bug-infested mattresses now, but they're fucking up the future of journalism as well. Sleepy's: you're awful.