Unions: Time to step up with ideas

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Unions: Time to step up with ideas

Newspaper bosses and media companies can be short-sighted. Dull of wit. Evil, even. This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention.

Myself, I’ve taken an active role in meetings where the topic — stated or unstated — was “We need to save a pantsload of money, and if that means we create less expensive ways to cover the news, then so be it.” Yes, I have been a suit, running the online division of The Baltimore Sun until August of last year.

And yet, to the chagrin of some of my employers at the time, I do believe that unions have a proud history in this country and have continued to be necessary and to contribute value to their members into this century, if only to negotiate slightly better severance packages when jobs are eliminated.

But if the newspapers of America are going to crawl out of the bomb-crater they currently find themselves in, unions like The Newspaper Guild are going to have to lose some of the Norma Rae routine and come to the table as true negotiators, with real ideas. The time for the same old posturing is over.

I’m thinking about this announcement from the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild at The Washington Post, which takes issue with the creation of a new “community reporter” position, starting at $34,000, which is close to the mean ($37,010, 2006 Census data) salary for people in metropolitan areas.

The Bulletin serves to continue the counter-productive knife fight between worker and publisher that goes on oblivious to the fact that the house they’re fighting over is totally engulfed in flames.

Union members in cities across the land are contributing mightily toward the advancement of modern newspapers — they’re the people blogging, and shooting video, and networking with readers through Facebook and Twitter — but where are their leaders? Union sites catalog the collapse of the business, but there’s little — if anything — about building for the future. Where are the official union versions of Jeff Jarvis or Alan Mutter or Mark Potts or Gina Chen? Newspapers have been investing in online — some would say not enough, but at least it’s something — for 13-15 years now. Can unions say the same? If just one-tenth of the dues-money spent litigating grievances went to an innovation prize or to fund a digital news skunkworks, imagine what might be accomplished.

Please — prove me wrong. Link to union sites in the comments that are suggesting new solutions and helping to build a new way. Nothing would make my day better than to realize this entire rant was misplaced.

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Mark Coddington February 3, 2012

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Michael Hill

Tim,
First off, as former unit chair of the Guild at the Sun, I can tell you we were constantly pushing for and talking about innovation. Did you happen to go to this public session we co-sponsored in 2006 at Johns Hopkins?
“The Transformation of America’s Daily Newspapers,” an Institute for Policy Studies panel discussion with Michael Hill, Baltimore Sun; Thomas Kunkel, University of Maryland Merrill School of Journalism; and Howard Weaver, the McClatchy Company.
I don’t recall any Sun management types there. That was only one of many such sessions the Guild held, some internal, some external.
We would have loved to have pushed for innovation at the website but, as you know, the Guild was kept out of that area. Indeed, if Tribune management had spent the money they spent on fighting the Guild (remember taking the case to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals that kept us out the website? Or the expense of separate facilities?) on innovation, maybe the company would not be bankrupt now.
Newman

The “‘Norma Rae’ routine?” You mean like fighting for decent working conditions, a fair wage, dignity?

It’s like Jerry says to Kramer: “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, do you?”
Abe

From a 30-year Guild member:

Mr. Windsor is entirely correct. A case in point:

The Newspaper Guild at the New York Times recently sent the following note to its members.

Note the priority of the Guild: if you can’t get the newspaper to pay for training, don’t get trained.

Now that’s an attitude that’s really going to take its members far.

UNION TIMES

SURVIVING BAD ECONOMIC TIMES

February 03, 2009

The financial troubles at The New York Times have many Guild members
looking over their shoulders wondering when the next round of layoffs may
occur and whether they will next. As a result, many of our members are
understandably operating in survival mode and scurrying to find a niche.

In this economic climate, the Guild more than ever encourages members to
make themselves as valuable as possible. Embrace the web, which undoubtedly
holds the key to our future. Get involved with blogging, learn how to do
video feeds and take courses in and out of The Times to add to your skills.
The Guild, through its parent union, the Communications Workers of America,
can help you find appropriate courses that you can take on your own. Many
of these courses can be done on-line while you are at home.

The Guild suggests making these improvements to your skills under the
caveat that you do so during regular working hours or receive the
appropriate compensation (overtime pay) called for by our collective
bargaining agreement. While instructional courses generally do not qualify
one for extra compensation, training approved or required by The Times
should be conducted during regular working hours or on paid overtime. The
same compensation rules apply for blogging. The Guild has learned that some
employees are blogging on their own time, working through the wee hours of
the night, with no additional compensation. Some are receiving
compensation, but only a small portion of what they are owed. Others are
simply getting to leave a couple hours early in exchange for their work on
the web. As a result of this “Let’s-Make-a-Deal” environment, some
employees are taken care of and others are taken advantage of, which is not
what being part of a union is all about. Getting paid what you deserve is
especially important in light of the recent sacrifices Guild members made
to preserve their health benefits.

Management told the Guild during recent negotiations that they needed more
flexibility in the workplace if the company is to survive. The Guild
understands that it is in our best interest for the paper to thrive and not
be so set in our ways. But at this point, it appears as if our members are
the only ones who are being flexible and are giving their services away in
the process. If overtime budgets are tight, bloggers should be given time
during their normal shift to complete an assignment rather than be expected
to do it pro bono or play, “Let’s Make a Deal’’
with their livelihood. The time has come for management to stop preying on
our members’ fear and vulnerability, pay our members what they are worth
and schedule them appropriately.

TAKE EVALUATIONS SERIOUSLY

While Managing Editor Bill Keller recently reassured our staff that no
layoffs are expected in the newsroom in 2009, the business side did not
receive any such encouragement. And these positive newsroom projections
could change at any moment. So, members should be aware that in the last
round of layoffs, management claimed that evaluations played a key role in
the decision process of deciding which members to let go out of seniority
order. The Guild believes that management did not correctly follow the
contract regarding those layoffs and is currently going through the
arbitration process. We feel confident that we will prevail in our case.

Nonetheless, the company does have the right to use evaluations
when doing out-of-seniority layoffs. So, members should take their
evaluations very seriously. Make sure that you read it over carefully.
Management is contractually obligated to present your evaluation to you two
full business days before meeting with you. You have a right to union
representation in your evaluation meeting.

You have two calendar weeks from the date that you received your evaluation
to file a written response to The Times. Anything that you dispute or
believe is unfair or unfounded should be pointed out in your written
response. Please consult with the Guild on these matters. Guides to the
evaluation process are available in the Guild office on the 28th Floor. You
are not required to sign your evaluation and we suggest that you don’t if
you dispute anything it contains.

Lately, management has asked colleagues to evaluate each other, which is
not something the Guild endorses. It is management’s job to evaluate our
members, not yours. You are not required to take part in this process, and
we strongly encourage you not to do so. If you still feel compelled to
help management with this process, please operate under the old adage, “If
you don’t have anything nice to say about something, don’t say it at all.’’
These days, your words may just cost a colleague of yours their job.

CHECK YOUR CHECKS

Although we have warned our members numerous times before about
the importance of checking their pay checks each week, the institution of
Kronos, the computer system used for payroll, has made our advice even more
important.

The Guild has received a number of complaints from members who have been
without start and night differentials since the newsroom switched over to
its new payroll system in December. Some have not received night
differential while on vacation while others have not yet been paid for
holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day) due to a computer
glitch. The Guild has learned that office managers have been instructed to
merely respond to individual inquiries about unpaid holidays, rather than
publicize the problem through staff-wide emails, on the belief that such
alerts may alarm staffers who were not affected. So, if you were
short-changed, don’t expect your manager to point out the omission.

From what we understand, Kronos is not a very forgiving system when
stringent filing deadlines for overtime, class and holiday claims, are
missed. Members have complained that if you miss a deadline, it is
virtually impossible to file a claim or rectify the situation on your own.
Even office administrators have had difficulty getting member paid properly
after forms were rejected.

The Guild will meet with management shortly to discuss all the pay issues
involved with the Kronos system.

In addition to the problems with Kronos, there are a number of items that
need to be carefully tracked on your pay stubs. On January 1, members began
diverting 1 percent of their projected March raise to help fund our health
plan (“G/T Benefit 1% line” on pay stub). There are additional monies being
deducted for the health plan of your choosing (G/T Benefits $ amount).
There is also the 3 percent diversion being taken out from 2005 raise (G/T
Benefit Contribution). All of this can be terribly confusing – and can be
processed incorrectly.

We’ve also received reports that the proper amount of 401(k) contributions
was not deducted from some members’ checks in 2008. But many of those who
complained were not even aware of the oversight until Vanguard sent them a
letter informing them of their mistake. So these members did not have the
proper amount of money in their accounts and suffered tax ramifications
with no recourse. To further complicate things, Shared Services is now only
printing one line on your pay stub concerning 401(k) rather than two.
Prior to 2009, the first line concerning 401(k) dealt with your basic
contribution (0 to 6 percent) and the second line was devoted to additional
contributions (7 to 15 percent that is not matched by the company). Now
these lines are combined and may be even more difficult to track. Members
should check their accounts with Vanguard on a quarterly basis to make sure
their deductions are in order.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns about anything raised in
this shop paper or beyond, please do not hesitate to call Grievance
Chairperson Grant Glickson (ext. *****), Unit Chairperson Art Mulford (ext.
******) or Local Representative Anthony Napoli (*****).

[Phone numbers redacted. —Josh]
Tim Schick

I’m the administrator of the Providence Newspaper Guild. The newspapers I deal with are still stuck in the command-and-control model of management. The orders come from the top. The ideas of workers and their unions have no place in the business. To use your analogy: The house is on fire and management won’t let the employee call the fire department. That would be giving up control.

Our members have lots of good ideas, but management is not interested in them.
Chris

Why are you comparing this salary to the national average for metro areas? A little misleading, I’d say.

How about comparing it to DC’s average per capita income, which was over $56,000 a few years ago? Highest in the country:
http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/040907t.htm

Decent in North Dakota, I guess, but not DC. It’s just a blatant attempt by WP to capitalize on the bad job market.
Albert

The job of newspaper companies is to publish news and innovate a business model that makes them viable in the long term.
The job of unions is to protect workers’ rights as the employer, such as Tribune, innovates in a manner that uses its existing labor force in a manner that provides for that innovation without creating an environment that stifles growth.
Your logic in blaming unions for overall corporate lack of vision (and that IS the case here) is flawed.
Lastly, a suggestion, you might want to update your column snap shot to a more recent version. Looks like it came from your Match.com account.
http://newsofthesun.blogspot.com Gus Sentementes

Tim,

My two cents: I think newspapers with unions operated under the delirious assumption, for years, that they could figure out how to make the Websites profitable, without involving unionized staff. So, the door to the Web was kept shut to newsroom employees, right from the start, in these environments.

Now, it’s an all-hands-on-deck moment in the industry, and unions are being asked: “what have you done to help?” And I’m thinking: Excuse me? The suits erected so many barriers to innovation and collaboration from Day 1 — but now, the mantra is “we’re in this together.”
http://www.niemanlab.org/ Joshua Benton

As both a proud former Guild member and a veteran of a non-Guild shop, I don’t think unions deserve a spot on even a top-10 list of reasons newspapers are in crisis. It’s not as if the non-Guild papers are doing bang-up business.

To look at one example, it’s not as if Dallas (non-Guild) is doing great while Providence (Guild) is doing poorly, even though they’re owned by the same company.

And unions are, by their nature and mission, interested in the advocacy of their members’ interests.

That said: I hope journalists in this environment are doing what’s right for their careers — even if that means learning skills on their own time, not their employer’s.
http://newsofthesun.blogspot.com Gus Sentementes

Abe,

As a Guild mobilizer at the Baltimore Sun, I actually found the Guild memo you posted kind of reasonable. The company should absolutely value its employees enough to build in time for them to learn new skills, to retool and train. Sure, most reasonable people will also do stuff on their own, but the company also needs to show its workers that it is committed to them. You want a workforce that’s going to help you win in the 21st century. You have to invest in them. Period.
Michael Hill

Re your last graf: Please — prove me wrong. Link to union sites in the comments that are suggesting new solutions and helping to build a new way. Nothing would make my day better than to realize this entire rant was misplaced.

http://www.newsvision.org/index.php?q=about

That comes on the heels of a three-day Guild-sponsored conference in January that brought together all sorts of experts.
http://www.newsguild.org/ Bernie Lunzer

I’m happy to see the active interest in the Guild’s activity related to the future of media, as we have been very busy on this score. We spent a very full weekend in Baltimore with more than 150 activists just a month ago pursuing specific points that we think need addressing. We heard from folks like Ken Doctor and Chris Benner (U-Cal Davis) on problems with the current model and ideas on how to look forward.
Most importantly we discussed alternative ownership, something we have been pursuing for several years. In addition to employee stock ownership, we are pursuing passage of a new L3C law that would allow for foundation support that could be co-mingled with for-profit investment – this would work for current corporations and new corporations. We also talked about cooperative ownership, having just helped start up the Puerto Rico Daily Sun as a replacement for the shuttered San Juan Star. We have regular conference calls and work with leading experts. We believe there are several potential ownership models that could replace the failed market-driven, over-leveraged behemoths that are dragging the industry down.
We also explored the need for employee-driven business models, where true worker participation is guaranteed by contract. This would create real input on behalf of workers in developing successful media organizations. We believe that putting more power and decision-making in the front-line workers will make the difference in which organizations survive.
We talked specifically about training, and about how we must fill the void left by employers that are failing to step up and provide serious skills training. We have bargained union-provided programs in a few of our contracts and will continue to emphasize the critical need for training. On a national level we have encouraged all of our locals to take on new work, even where it may mean taking out contract language that has prohibited combinations of work – like the historical barriers between reporters and photographers. However, we will continue to closely monitor these combinations, because it will create new issues, and where it doesn’t work we’ll look for other solutions.
We have pushed for a re-professionalization of advertising sales. Current managements have transferred risk to salespeople in the form of commission plans, thinking that increasing pressure will result in increased revenue. In fact, they have created a revolving door and depleted the ranks of skilled sales people. The news business should be based on relationships, both in the newsroom and in the advertising department. Successful organizations will find ways to innovate and serve advertisers. The current stress-oriented, short-term approach in sales doesn’t address this. We are also looking for real ways to take advantage of the web for ad products that work. The future of journalism hinges on this as much as it does quality news.
We at the Guild are working hard to hold together communities that are being pounded by bad decisions, a bad economy and lack of innovation. We believe our brands still have significant value and that true collaboration can get us to the other side of this disaster. It doesn’t mean we won’t still have issues over sharing profits when organizations are successful. We continue to participate in future of media workshops around the country, and are co-sponsoring a workshop on digital media at the Newseum with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism on March 30.
This quick response just scratches the surface of all the work we’re doing in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.
We tell our members that hope is built on hard work and good ideas. We believe we’re pursuing both and are always happy to talk about it to those who will listen.
Mark Pattison

If the Post goes ahead with this plan, I invite Tim to apply for one of the jobs, put up with the nation’s second-longest commutes and the enduringly high housing costs — and the other features that contribute to Washington’s cost of living. By the time he finds someplace affordable to live, it’ll be out of the Post’s preferred coverage area, and he’d be out of luck snagging a “community journalist” gig.

The question has to be asked: What were they thinking? The answer: They weren’t. Given the area’s education levels and its high appetite for news, readers in print or online will notice the disparity between Pulitzer Prize-caliber reporting and the “community journalist” so many of us worked alongside early in our careers.

I can’t fault the Post for trying to strengthen its local coverage, but it would be better off devoting the precious column inches it already has to community-specific journalism written by the existing cadre of high-caliber reporters, instead of the pan-regional columns that take up so much space in the Thursday “Extra” sections.

When it comes to technology, it was the Post’s idea, not the Guild’s, to create a firewall between its dot-com operation, Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive, and its “traditional” newsroom. It seems the Post didn’t want the unionized reporters to infect the doc-commers, so WPNI was plopped down in right-to-work (for less) Virginia. Now the Post is trying to merge the two operations. Ask someone on either side of the Potomac how much success there’s been.

Despite the current economic misfortunes in our nation, many newspapers are making money — just not enough to pay the debt service incurred when media giants gobbled them up to get bigger. Right now, we’re going through a period of terrible indigestion.

Unions, the Guild included, have offered to work with publishers. But unions can’t force management to be smart with technology. Unions can’t force management to sell a part of the franchise when the industry is bottoming out, especially if prospective buyers can’t get financing. An “L3C” (limited liability low-profit corporation) may be one way out. Investors in an L3C are locally based, more often than not. And they understand that they are operating the business as a community good and aren’t out to extract the last bit of revenue it can. It’s not “foundation journalism” run by nonprofits, but at least nonprofits are required to plow surpluses back into the enterprise.

The L3C was one of several ideas advanced during a forum conducted by the Guild in conjunction with the Communications Workers of America’s other media sectors, the National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians and the Publishing, Printing and Media Workers sector held in Baltimore last month.

Perhaps eomployee ownership of the means of production is an idea whose time has come. Not Tribune’s way; it pillaged the retirements of thousands of its non-union workers (it couldn’t touch the union members’ protected funds) to finance the purchase — and it wasn’t until it declared Chapter 11 that Tribune started boasting that it was “America’s largest employee-owned media company.” As if the employees had more say than Sam Zell and his minions in how the company’s been run.

Even so, despite my observations, let Tim apply for a job at the Post. The “community journalism” job likely pays more than he’s getting for posting a blog.
Edgar A Poe

It’s clear that you don’t have the vaguest notion of what a union is supposed to do.
Anon

Here in Minneapolis, it is indeed the “Norma Rae” routine. The Guild’s leaders here have quite literally sent out protest letters DEMANDING that “our leaders spend less time fighting us and showing us the way to the future.”

As in, “It’s not our job to innovate or to look to the future. Our job is to fight management.”

As Dr. Phil would say, “How’s that workin’ for ya?”

As for Mr. Lunzer: Go ahead, have all the panels you want. Until you create action, sit down and stop spending dues sending out a lame, months-old-by-the-time-it-gets-to-people “news”letter.
George Avalos

Look at union boss Lunzer’s first several proposals: changes in how newspaper publishing companies are owned.

In other words, the first thing Mr. Lunzer is concerned about is how can the union accumulate more power — not about which OPERATIONAL changes would be beneficial.

But since I challenge the union to come up with something more creative than “give the union an ownership interest in the corporation”, I have two proposals. One is designed to capture more revenue, and the other designed to stop driving readers away.

1. charge for locally generated, staff-written news content. Link it to a print subscription or charge per use for non-print subscribers. Somebody who is neither of the above gets to see only the first 1 or 2 paragraphs.

2. cease editorial endorsements of candidates for elected office at any level. Regardless of whether the president’s name is Bush, Clinton, Bush, or Obama, roughly 40 percent of the country is fiercely conservative, roughly 40 percent of the country is fiercely liberal, and roughly 20 percent leans slightly one way or the other.

Either way, an endorsement will anger around half of a newspaper’s readers. At the rate readers are vanishing, endorsements do more harm than good.

See how easy that is, union folks? It’s actually possible to come up with more than the non-starters the unions typically come up with.

Sure, there are countering points of view for these ideas — just about all ideas have challenges involved — but at least they’re potentially feasible ideas. That’s more than the union ever comes up with.

-George
http://mediaworkers.org Carl Hall

So… We should “come to the table as true negotiators, with real ideas.” There’s a thought!

I’m a working member out of the SF Chronicle newsroom, and fulltime organizer/negotiator lately for the Guild in the Bay Area. We’re full of bright ideas around here.

Last year we formed a new unit of local MediaNews Group dailies known as the Bay Area News Group-East Bay, now bargaining for a first contract. I’ve got nothing against Norma Rae, or standing up for our rights. Is that posturing?

Really and truly, we’ve proposed many ideas here and believe our management counterparts also see some value in things like elevating the importance of editorial quality and a cooperative approach to working out problems.

We’ve made formal proposals for a joint committee on innovation and workplace design to keep pace with changing technology. We’ve researched how to get state support for a training initiative. We have tentative contract language to minimize formal grievances and arbitrations, are proposing a flexible regional wage system geared to the new business models, and have pretty much skipped the genuflections to our ancient dogma. We’ve broached the idea of merging bargaining units where appropriate, and we’re doing something creative in the area of health care.

We even have agreed — at the risk of losing the 2009 Norma Rae Award — to cost-cutting when the company made a case for it. But we still have dared to push for things like decent pay and benefits. Sorry!

I am an old guy, true, but we have some of the most talented and inspiring young journalists and leaders in the country (Sara Steffens, Karl Fischer, Josh Richman, Eric Louie, Jeremiah Oshan, Lisa White, many others). They not only bring real ideas to the table, but real guts. They voted to organize when not many said it could be done. Even our critics in the unit, and in the management, show a lot of class and commitment, for the most part.

Our “One Big BANG: One Guild Universe” project has gotten a lot of attention inside the Guild. One of my favorite industry bloggers has invited us to tell our story to a wider audience, which I expect we will do as soon as we are clear of our overriding duty to our members, and to the management, to focus on our negotiations right now.

But you raised a fair question: Where’s the voice of the progressive workforce? I think its here. The Guild leaders who’ve already commented show we’re headed in the right direction. If some of our ideas are given a chance, and this rotten economy eventually turns around, perhaps we can show part of the answer by example here in the Bay Area.

One last thing: (Standing on my desk now) UNION!
http://www.timwindsor.com/ Tim Windsor

Sorry I’m late in responding here.

First, to Mike Hill, you are correct that a lot of energy at The Sun was spent on a company strategy to create the interactive team separate. I think there was a residual value in allowing for an incubator effect at a time when there wasn’t widespread interest in the newsroom to focus time or resources on the web. But your point is accurate and well-taken.

Mikes later post about the NewsVision conference is exactly what I was hoping to tease out when I whacked this particular hornet’s nest. Looks like a great event and, at $75, a bargain!

Thanks to the Guild and The Merrill School for sponsoring it.
DoGGD

Tim, Too bad you left the Sun before you got to drink the Lee Abrams Kool Aid. I’m sure your ideas would jive well with his. He had the audacity to say in an email to the company that people won’t notice the missing “little things.” Unfortunately, they not only noticed it when more became less, but when the newspaper can’t get the correct shade of orange, amber, rust or brown the Sun calls it when they want to run 6 shades of Baltimore rowhouse colors (that was called spot color in the old days) on a section front. The Sun now looks like a Penzoil ad more than it does a newspaper.
http://www.timwindsor.com/ Tim Windsor

Chris, on the income figures, what can I say? Yours look as legitimate as mine. But I’ll take yours as stipulated and say that entry-level jobs are almost always below the mean or the average for any given population center. That’s the nature of entry-level jobs.

My first job – in television news – was $25,917, inflation-adjusted ($11,500 actual 1981 dollars). So it appears I got shafted.
http://www.timwindsor.com/ Tim Windsor

DoGGD,

Of course people notice the little things. Newspapers are all about the big and little things. Nobody takes the Abrams Koolaid as you call it seriously.

All I said above was I wish union bosses would take the reins and start driving the innovation discussion.

DId I say it in a way that angered more than a few people? Clearly. But why haven’t unions seized the initiative and pushed newspaper companies to change dramatically?

The Newseum conference that Mike Hill and Bernie Lunzer note above is a very good thing. I’d love to see more of that kind of focus on rebuilding the business so that there is a business there to support the work of journalism.
http://www.timwindsor.com/ Tim Windsor

Carl,

I’m with you (even though, in the spirit of transparency, I need to say I’ve never been a member of a union. I almost was – when I took that princely $11,500 job in Baltimore, I turned down a union-covered job in DC with NBC, which was offering less money for essentially the same job. And a hellish commute. And, of course, dues.)

That said, and as I said waaaay back up at the top of this column, I get why unions are necessary and I think this country and its workers are far better for the strides that unions made in the 20th century. I just was wondering why some of the dues that the membership sent off every week couldn’t be spent to drive innovation. Mike Hill and Bernie Lunzer pointed out one great project. Sounds like you’re up to some promising work, knocking down some of the old barriers of overly-structured (IMO) job descriptions.

As I noted, it’s the journalists — union-represented and not — that are doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to innovation. With rare exceptions, management and union bosses alike seem more comfortable fighting the old fights.
Mike Bowler

Tim:
I worked for the paper you worked for, the Sun, for nearly 35 years, not a second of which was outside of Guild jurisdiction (though I resisted many enducements, including a $20 bill tossed on my coffee table at home). There were strikes in ’78 and ’87, and my Social Security income map after both of them spiked higher than in any other years. The company, under a number of publishers — seven, in my case — did its best to break the Guild but never could succeed. That may happen now, but the Guild at the Sun has a splendid record of bargaining for its members and looking out for people, members and nonmembers, who would have been royally f**ked. (I think of a malcontent who never joined but whose ass was saved after he was fired.)

Norma Rae? Give me a break. This is the reality of urban newspapering. Quite simply, long before and after your time at the Sun, the Guild helped elevate salaries and fringe benefits, which the current owners are having trouble abrogating.
MW

Ah, yes, if only those pesky bomb-throwing unions would get out of the way then management would finally be able to put its wisdom into action and save the news business. You know, with its building up of “residual value” and its “incubator effects” and the like. (And it could throw some “value-added” in there for good measure.)

The argument that unions are at fault for the industry’s woeful state smacks of those who say its ACORN’s fault that our economy went off a cliff, not, say, the fault of corporate leaders and government regulators who were making the decisions.

Truth is, around the country, most newspapers aren’t unionized at all, or have very weak unions. The idea that unions were in any significant way able to block real innovation is laughable.

Newspaper managers and owners weakened the industry to the point of near-extinction over the last two decades in a number of ways:

1. Rather than investing the future — and in technology and their people — they insisted on profit margins that are unheard of in other industries (except perhaps subprime mortgage lenders before the crash).

2. Rolling out such “innovations” in the print world as deciding that people would be willing to pay more for less — ie that people would keep subscribing to increasingly thinner and contest-lite newspapers aimed mainly at people who don’t like to read.

3. Blowing many of the big decisions on growing and diversifying their empires. Remember Telerate? How much did that debacle cost Dow Jones in the 1990s? $2 billion? Imagine if that money had been put into real innovations, strong investigative reporting and great writing and presentation.

4. Loading up on mountains of debt so that much of their cash flow was directed at debt service, rather than, say, innovation and providing smart, fascinating content.
http://newsafternewspapers.blogspot.com/ Martin Langeveld

Will the Nvision conference create any kind of online record of its proceedings? Will it result in any kind of year-round online forum about the future of journalism, sponsored by the Guild? Will there be a Newspaper Guild digital news skunkworks?
Chris

“My first job – in television news – was $25,917, inflation-adjusted ($11,500 actual 1981 dollars). So it appears I got shafted.”

Well, you want to be on TV, I guess that’s how it goes.

Regarding salaries–I work in DC, made around 3 times last year what that poor community reporting sap is going to make, and still live in the Balimer rather than DC suburbs in order afford the house, the yard, the dog, decent public schools, etc.

If I thought the W.P. bosses were actually looking for a 23 y.o. entry level reporter, I wouldn’t judge quite so harshly. But as I said, I think their plan is to put the screws on an experienced reporter laid off from a higher paying job.
http://sellingprint.blogspot.com MichaelJ

This is a great post to mainstream this conversation.

We have to face the fact that at least since the Air Traffic Controllers strike in the 1980′s the public discourse changed to make the union, like those”irresponsible” home owners the cause of the problems.

The irony is that it is mostly reporters and editors who reflexively tell and retell that same inaccurate story. The conventional narrative about the Unions role in auto’s demise was just the most recent example of echo chamber “reporting.”

No doubt unions are modifying their focus and coming to a more defining position to fix broken institutions. But, they are the only organizational form that can push back against business folks who are also doing their jobs.

It’s not good people v bad people. It’s everybody trying to do their jobs to get it fixed.

A helpful step would be for journalists and editors to stop doing the easy job of telling the “good v evil” story.

Just look at most of the latest blablabla about the “stimulus” package. Has anyone learned anything other than Republicans this and Democrats that..and what does this mean for the Obama presidency?

When I hear “reporters” say “it is really complicated” and “no one yet understands the details”, I say to myself, “Isn’t that the job you are paid to do?” and . . .”you want to get paid for your words? give me a break.”
http://www.newsguild.org Bernie Lunzer

Martin – I’m certain there will be digital access to the conference, and we’ll talk with the University of Maryland about this. We’re reshaping our own communications to better report out all that is happening (like the Portland Maine ESOP story). We certainly will find a way to report out on the experimentation that’s taking place in Guild communities and the initiatives we’re putting forward.
Michael Hill

Tim,
Here’s how the “incubator” model of putting the Sun’s website out of Guild jurisdiction (which cost not only expensive real estate rents, but also a costly trip to the Fourth Circuit appelate court) actually worked: if you were in a Guild represented position, you could not talk to the website people; only management could talk to the Web. This is not a way to incubate innovation. This is just stupid. And you turn around and point fingers at the Guild? Reporters I know were begging to do things online but first it all had to be evaluated as to how it affected the wall that had been constructed to keep the Guild out. Only later, in some desperation, did the gates open.
Even if you could make the argument that opposing the hiring of a very cheap community reporter stifles innovation, it pales in comparison to the stranglehold the management of newspapers had on innovation for years. Remember, these were the guys offering buyouts, reducing staff, when they were making 25 percent profits. Now, that’s impressive long term thinking!
http://OneBigBang.org Sara Steffens

I sense a misunderstanding here of how unions work.

Strategies aren’t dictated from the top. Instead, ideas bubble up from those very union members you mention — ideas that are brought to the bargaining table or simply put to work in local newsrooms.

This makes sense to me, since I suspect there is no single step that will save the news industry. Lots of problems compounded to create this mess, so we need lots of solutions, large and small, each designed to fit the needs of a local newsroom and its audience.

Since you asked for links with specific ideas, here’s the opening bargaining bulletin for our new Guild unit at the Bay Area News Group-East Bay:
http://onebigbang.org/DEV/?p=455

You’ll notice that we proposed “a major joint initiative in which the company and the Guild would collaborate to seek funds from the state of California to set up customized video and multimedia training for employees.”

We broached the idea, found the training partner and even delivered the necessary forms. And we’ve suggested that such training be extended as needed to non-union employees in our advertising department.

In another bargaining bulletin, we propose adding our membership to a larger, nearby health plan to save costs and improve benefits:
http://onebigbang.org/DEV/?p=475

Our members discuss ideas for improving our product and saving the news industry literally every day.

We’re mindful of the pressing financial needs of our owners, and willing to invest in our industry’s future, but we don’t believe that cutting coverage and slashing salaries is the best way to position our industry for the future. After all, the credibility earned by professional journalism is our main product, be it in print or online.
Guild worker

Whoever takes issue with the Guild’s ideas of different methods of ownership and control has no clue about the current state of newspapers and journalism in the country.

There is nothing wrong with the profession of journalism in this country, but the BUSINESS of journalism is broken.

Newspaper publishers have stepped into the same financial cow patty as the rest of the nation, getting far overleveraged and rendering profits into losses. Gannett for example made a billion dollars profit in 2008 but financial missteps soaked up most of that without so much as a drop of contribution to the news product.

These problems are contributing to a downward spiral of bad business causing product decline, which contributes to less demand and worse business. The first thing that needs to happen, then, is that cycle needs to break.

That means the corporate influence must be mitigated, and things like foundations and even possibly public support are the kind of out-of-the-box ideas unions can propose (being champions of progressive politics) that business cannot or will not (being beholden to conservative politics).