It's called thinning the herd

Wiser than his years? He's been doing it for more than three decades.
Comparing 300,000+ GE employees and a newsroom will only lead you right to a false conclusion.

 

or put the newpaper out of business for still runing the place like a guild

 

I've been in the business for 25 years. My parents, between them, were in the business over 60 years.

While at some long-lost, astronomically-isolated bastions of romantic journalistic integrity and independence, the executive editors may have been able to tell the suits to fuck off, over the history of journalism, the huge huge majority of all newspapers everywhere have always been predominantly run by people from advertising, circulation and accounting.

And unfortunately, what went on in the daily operations of the New York Times and the Washington Post was usually not really very indicative of what was going on in the industry as a whole.

 

Not all newspapers are guild papers. Most, but not all.

 

Well, Jared does have a point that a previous generation of editors perhaps more frequently and successfully stood up for their newsrooms, but I'm not sure Gene Roberts today would fare any better than the most recent L.A. Times editors did.

But as far as editors hiring without the consent of publishers, I sure don't remember that. A pretty great book about a newspaper deciding to go big time in that era is "Fresh Ink" about The Dallas Morning News. Very detailed about how they went about building the paper. It wasn't all that unusual in the 1980s for a bad or mediocre paper to lure an editor from a more prestigious place by allowing him 50-60 new hires. The first major metro I worked in 1984, I was one of six new positions just in sports that year, and we were not one of the prestige metros of that era. Even so, I believe they have more people now than we did then.

 

I talked with a friend tonight and we commiserated about the state of the industry. I ended up saying that I wished a publisher would work a month in the newsroom in every role possible. Then he or she can tell me why they need to slash newsroom jobs.

 

Really?

I'm questioning but not arguing. It never occurred to me that most papers had guilds. Certainly most in the Northeast and possibly the West, but rarely in the South and not so much in the Midwest, from my experience. I'd be curious to see how that translates into totals.

 

Most don't. Most major metros do in the Northeast, Midwest and Far West with a few in the South. Here's a list:

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

 

I stand corrected. Of course I've seen the list. But, it never occurred to me that it was comprehensive. I've had four stops in 19 years. Only one not being a guild paper.

 

"Consistent with economic realities"? Hell no, owners and publishers are shitting themselves and running for the hills, because the circulation numbers are plummeting well below what any of them had 20 years ago, and the ad revenue is fragmented like never before. Just pruning back newsroom by 10 percent or 20 percent isn't going to stop those trains.

Doomsday? More like Doomyesterday? Game almost over. Anything that comes next will have to be a new (lesser) game.

 

Hey, Boom, for all the efficiencies from technology we've seen over the past 20 years, we still haven't seen anyone do much to close that 1 a.m. 'til 6 a.m. window, which keeps us five hours behind the moment, at least, in terms of print. And we're still dependent on unshaven guys in beat-up station wagons and sweat pants to get our fine journalism -- in its paid form -- to the customers.

 

Speaking of which. Why does my asshole Jackass continue to throw my paper in the gutter? I'm ready to stick him with a needle of HGH. Glutteral abscess be damned.
It's really pissing me off. Of course, I called and complained. And, of course, the person I spoke to was "Sharon" from the Sri Lankan customer service phone bank.
They figured out the problem.
For the past week the paper has come in a plastic bag (even though it hasn't rained). So, now, the goddamn paper -- still in gutter -- fills up with water from the neighbors' fucking sprinklers before I can get to in the morning.
Jesus Christ. A little help here.