You are the media company CEO ...

I'm dead, 100% serious. I believe the newspaper business model is completely broken with no hope of recovery. If I were a CEO and acting in the best interests of my company, I'd be looking for a way to get out while the getting is good.

 

I'd take my bonus and retire.

 

Exactly.

At some point, you make so many cutbacks to save money that the quality of your product suffers because there's only so much so few people can do. In time, fewer and fewer people decide to buy an inferior product.

You cut off your nose to cure a head cold instead of finding a real solution. Then when circulation and sales drop, executives that don't want to print newspapers argue that no one wants to read them anymore. Well, we're giving them plenty of reasons not to.

If you want to save money, the first place to go is to stop giving bonuses to executives and CEOs when your company is not making enough money! Give them the incentive to work harder to get rewarded for the company's success. Don't punish the workers that are barely getting paid as it is.

 

My brother is a teacher and said his district, or maybe the state, is considering furloughs of six days during the school year beginning in autumn.

But they were told if that is approved and done, teachers would be asked to come in during those unpaid days for training.

"Fuck that," he said. I agreed.

 

I imagine the teachers' union might have a bit of a problem with that.

I also wonder how much money that would really save. If you give a teacher a day off somebody still has to cover his/her classes. That means paying a sub.

 

That makes sense. At the same time, from a morale perspective I think you're better off pissing off your workers for a week than pissing them off every time they get their paycheck. And again, at least they get a "vacation" out of the cut.

In the big picture, I think the reality is the companies need to be happy with a smaller profit margin. The days of the newspaper printing money for investors are over, but that doesn't mean they all have to shut down. How you pull that off, I don't know.

On a more practical level, the first move I make is to identify the online sites that have succeeded in supporting themselves through advertising and then raid their sales staffs. The long term solution is to be better at selling online advertising.

 

WFW. I do know my company plans to spread furloughs out over the course of the quarter, for whatever that's worth.

As for the bonuses thing, I'm all for it, CEO's don't deserve bonuses. But that's really just a symbolic drop in the bucket.

 

I would take whatever my contractual buyout was and let some other asshat kill the product.

Even if I never worked again, I'm pretty sure I could live off the $3-5 million/year I'd made in the prior years working for the company.

 

No means of cutting payroll doesn't suck for those on said payroll. But pay cuts are better than furloughs which are better than layoffs -- in terms of the product.
But I'd do none of them. I'm the CEO, first I charge for online content, because you have to show some idea about increasing revenues. Second, talk to my remaining advertisers and ask them what the hell they'd like to see. Not that I'd do all of it, but I doubt advertisers are being given much input now. Couldn't hurt.
I'd tell the newspaper staffs, "gang, we're going to die with our boots on. I will give you the resources to put out the best product you can, and I will market said product the best I can. But if we can't stop the bleeding in some set time period (how long depends on the books), we will get out of the newspaper business."
The death of a thousand cuts being practiced today is 1. inhumane. 2. Guaranteed not to work. Maybe my way has a 1-1000 chance. Beats no chance.

 

This is all true ... but from an actual employees' POV, I'd rather just take the week off. If nothing else, you at least get to keep your base salary.

So when the economy and the business improves (ha ha ha .... ha ha ha ... whoa boy), at least your next raise is based off of that. Otherwise, when they do start handing out raises again (pause again here for hysterical laughter), it might take you two raises just to get up to the previous level.

Just give me my unpaid week to get shitfaced drunk, please. If it meant I didn't have to answer my cell phone, I'd almost welcome it.

 

As the anti-Donald Trump would say:

"You're hired!!!"