Boston Globe is not cutting jobs, but wants to cut pay 10%

Not to speak for SF, but that does seem to be the case (well, still maybe a little greed, and an all-around-shitstorm for advertising revenue).

To me, in the case of the Globe, I feel more sorry for the quality of the product than (most of) the individuals affected. That may sound harsh, but if you can make it to the Globe, you've got some skills, and those skills can land you another job that will likely pay at least what you were making there, be it in journalism or something else. Now, that may be harder for a 50-something with a couple of kids in school than for a 27-year-old effin' stud who can move anywhere. But that's why a pay cut is still better than a layoff. $72K may not be $80K, but it's better than nothing.
The end result, though, is that those who can will eventually leave, and those who could won't get into this dying business in the first place. So the great papers won't be nearly as great as they used to be, and we'll all become less and less valuable to the readers we claim to serve.

 

I've been through two layoffs/downsizings over the last 20 years, and I can assure you that keeping a job with a 10% paycut is much, much preferred to a 100% paycut with no idea of when the next job will come.

When I lost my 40K job at The National 17 years ago, I would have taken a 36K job in a heartbeat. When unemployed and suddenly cobbling together free-lance, a steady paycheck at 36K looked awfully good to me at the time.

10% is all relative whether you go from 40K to 36K or 80K to 72K. They both feel about the same to the recipient.

 

There is the obvious flaw in the idiot managers' thinking: They want to kick the veteran journos to the curb because they make (relatively) too much money and allegedly don't have the sizzle to attract the youth market. Meanwhile, plenty of younger journos see this and realize that there are no more careers worth pursuing in daily journalism. Either the ground will move under your feet in the near future or you will start to be viewed as a ledger item to buy out/lay off around the time you reach age 40. So they will stay away from the business entirely, because they're witnesses to what's happening to the vets.

Meanwhile, all these asinine decisions and policies and panic strategies are being imposed by an elite group of, guess what, folks in their 50s and 60s who don't see the rules applying to themselves. They managed the industry into the predicament it is in and now they're attacking it from within.

Our so-called "leaders" are as responsible for the death spiral we're in as any outside factors (technology, reader tastes and habits, cultural shifts , you name it).

 

What thinking? When you start eating your young and ruining your brand, you've stopped thinking, at least beyond the next quarterly earnings report.

 

A first-year investment banker? Better specify before saying that 72K is only one-half of their annual income.

 

I would take the pay cut every time.

 

If I were making $80,000 and not committed to a mortgage and such, yes. But I don't know many people who make that, and with gas and food prices going up and salaries not even close to keeping pace, I wonder if the union would even think about this.

Call the bluff and say no, and in the meantime, send out resumes for a possible soft landing, in case the worst happens.

 

FWIW, a 5-year veteran at the Globe starts at $72K, according to the Guild.

http://newsguild.org/scales/index.php?ID=4937

Safe to say there are probably a bunch making 80 or more.

 

If I take a 10% pay cut does that mean I can do 10% less work? Or come in or leave 10% early?

Seriously though, I'd consider it if I saw it in writing that the publisher and CEO and all the corporate VP's and other suits making six figures were going to take a 10-15% pay cut. I think that would only be fair!

 

A couple execs suggested that -- one was Bill Keller at the NYT and I think the other was in St. Pete, but I can't find it -- and some people here doubted their sincerity. So they really can't win.

I don't begrudge them their money, but I would like to see some accountability at the top. I would like to see it be more like pro sports, where before you turn the whole roster upside down, the first thing you do is question why the coach and GM haven't been able to come up with a plan that would allow the existing players to succeed. And you start by changing the people at the top.

 

A) I dont care if people at the Globe are making $90K. You live according to your means. A 10 percent salary reduction is huge.

B) Yes, it's better than getting laid off. But 10 percent this year, what's it going to be next year? Think the Globe staff will be getting raises at their next review? If I were at the Globe, I'd take the reduction and then start looking for a new job/career, because you never again will make more than you did in 2008.

C) At some point we're all going to have to weigh "our love" for these jobs.

 

Those of us who do this for "love" might want to start opening our eyes to the fact that our "spouse" in this career-related romance is devolving into the drunk and tattooed parolee wearing the wife-beater shirt, as so thoroughly captured on any episode of "COPS."

That's a kind of love you need to run, rather than walk, away from.