Wall Street DESTROYED the Newspaper Unions and We ALL Suffer for It.

[Octafish]

IMO, the most important union for democracy is that of the newspaper guild. Newsapapers are vital to the nation. They help us understand the big story -- how stuff fits together in the big picture for each of us in the community. Most of all, they help hold government to account.



Getting news and information from the tee vee is not the same thing at all, as Marshall McLuhan noted almost half a century ago. If you doubt it holds today, think about FOX and Roger Ailes. They are what make Chuck Todd seem rational.

In Detroit, Big Money did all they could to force the local Newspaper Guild and allied unions to go on strike in 1995. Led by Al Neuharth of Gannett News, the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press joined forces and hired scabs to fill the newsrooms. Two years later, they'd broken the strikers. Of 2,600 striking newspaper men and women, only 200 would get rehired. Author Chris Rhomberg, a sociology professor at Fordham University, chronicles the strike in "The Broken Table: The Detroit Newspaper Strike and the State of American Labor." The book was discussed by our colleagues at In These Times:

Bad News for Labor: New Detroit Newspaper Strike Book Underscores a Broken System

BY JOE BURNS
In These Times, May 30, 2012

EXCERPT...

Despite widespread community support and internal solidarity, the companies had the upper hand. The newspapers aggressively hired permanent replacement scabs and spent an estimated $40 million spent on private security, the employers paid another $1 million to buy off the suburban Sterling Heights police force where the production plant was located. When mass picketing at the plant threatened to block production, police responded with brutality. Judges sided with employers, enjoining the union.

“On February 14, 1997, after 19 months on strike, unions made an unconditional offer to return to work,” Rhomberg writes. “But employers announced that they would take back only a fraction of the striking workers, as new vacancies allowed.” Legal challenges, upon which the unions’ hopes of strike success hinged, failed to stick. Although the National Labor Relations ruled in 1997 that the employer had engaged in unfair labor practices, federal judges undercut the independent agency and upheld the newspapers in 2000, forcing the unions to agree to contracts on management’s terms.

The Broken Table explains the incredible odds these striking workers faced. For one, workers were attempting to strike one part of a national newspaper chain. Rhomberg explains in great detail the transformation of the newspaper industry from a locally run operation to an industry dominated by national mega news chains. This is a theme in many of the failed strikes of recent decades, where isolated local unions struck against massive national chains. In contrast, in the period following World War II, unions would take on entire industries with hundreds of thousands of workers striking at once.

Striking workers also faced the power of the government, which consistently backed the company throughout the strike. As Rhomberg meticulously documents, well in advance of the strike the Sterling Heights police department and the newspapers were jointly developing strike contingency plans.

SNIP...

Indeed, in both the public and private sectors, that system is in crisis. In recent years employers—including profitable companies and cash-strapped governments—have launched renewed offensives against collective bargaining rights, and aggressively pushed concessionary contract proposals. To name just two examples, more than 100,000 workers at Verizon and AT&T are fighting for good contracts with profitable employers, while Wisconsin public-sector unionists are in the fight of their life to recall anti-union Gov. Scott Walker. In case after case, employers have locked out workers, including sugar workers in Fargo, N.D.

CONTINUED...

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13274/bad_news_for_labor_new_detroit_newspaper_strike_book_underscores_a_broken_s

Now the economic import of unions can not be overstressed. Unions built the middle class in the USA, Europe and Japan. But for democracy, newspapers are essential. That is one reason why management -- the officers of the owners -- want to crush them. The other reason, when it comes to newspapers, management and ownership want to stifle dissent and direct coverage. That's the big reason why the press is the only business mentioned by name in the Constitution.

[yeoman6987]

1. The internet killed the newspaper

Who wants to read news about something that is already old?

[Octafish]

2. It certainly is working on it.

Like the guy in Monty Python and the Holy Grail said: "I'm not dead."

In answer to your question: Who would want to read something old from a newspaper? People who want to be well-informed.

[Travis_0004]

4. Cool, so you can learn about somehing I knew 12 hours ago

Like it or not, newspapers are dead. I don't know a single person who subscribes to a newspaper.

[Octafish]

7. ''Learn about'' isn't the same as ''understand.''

Which is an important point, although not the one I wanted to make with the OP.

While, yes, everyone I know under 35 uses the Internet and don't touch newspapers, they don't get the level of coverage online as they do in the paper. Of course, online you can go to the newspaper and read the story. However, going from experience, people do not read as much online as they would with the printed page.

My main point is the owners of the newspapers -- now largely people like Rupert Murdoch -- have done a disservice to democracy by busting newspaper unions. For example, Michigan Governor Dan Snyder (R-AAhole) appointed an Emergency Manager to steer Detroit into bankruptcy. The local papers, as well as the local tee vee and radio, did not cover that story as they could if their reporters and editors were unionized, for they would be able to report how Detroit got hosed in the bankruptcy.

[MineralMan]

14. I subscribe to a daily newspaper,

the St. Paul Pioneer Press. I read it each morning, every day of the week. While it's true that the stories are often about things I have already heard of, I get additional information in the newspaper. Often, that information is far more in-depth than what I saw on the Internet or on the TV news.

I also read about things that were not reported at all anywhere else, particularly locally.

The newspaper I read has a sizable circulation, although it's a lot thinner these days than it used to be.

So, now you know a single person who subscribes to a newspaper.

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. and sometimes you can learn of things that the rv machine

avoid with a passion.

[melm00se]

18. the real challenge

is how are people supposed to value something when the producer gives it away for free?

if the producer thinks it has no value how can they expect someone to pay for it?

[Octafish]

28. Important questions.

Last edited Tue Aug 18, 2015, 01:54 PM - Edit history (1)

A decent summary from a ways back sheds light on how news organizations are trying...

5 Ways to Monetize the Future of News Media

by Lauren Indvik
Mashable, May 26, 2010

This series is supported by The Poynter Institute’s Mobile Media blog – your guide to the intersection of mobile and media. Sign up to receive the blog in newsletter format and be entered into a drawing to win an iPad at Poynter.org/ipadgiveaway.

News media — including newspapers, news weeklies and TV news programs — was struggling long before the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession.

It was a struggle, however, that many investors in 2006 and 2007 perceived as merely a temporary setback — a setback they attempted to capitalize on by snatching up seemingly undervalued media companies. In 2006, newspaper publisher McClatchy acquired what was then the second largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., Knight Ridder, for $4.5 billion in cash and also financed $2 billion of the company's debt. In 2007, Rupert Murdoch purchased Dow Jones for $5.6 billion and Sam Zell bought the Tribune Co. for $13 billion — a move he quickly regretted when the company filed for bankruptcy one year later. Following that consolidation, more than 100 newspapers shut down in 2009.

The recession has forced news organizations to face what they have long suspected: Their business models are broken. The advent of the 24-hour TV and web news cycles and the convenience of digital distribution mean that many consumers no longer need or want newspapers and news weeklies. Combined with mounting print and distribution costs and the loss of classified advertising revenue — previously the bread and butter of newspapers — to websites like eBay, Craiglist and Google, news media has a serious crisis on its hands.

The numbers are ugly. Newspaper revenue fell 28% in the first three quarters of 2009, after declines of 17.7% in 2008 and 9.4% in 2007. Rounds of pay and staff cuts followed each bad quarter; nearly 15,000 employees were laid off in 2009 alone. Declining circulation also accelerated, dipping below pre-World War II levels — impressive, given that the U.S.'s population then was roughly half of what it is today. As the number of subscribers dwindled, so did the value of print ads on a per-ad basis. Weekly news magazines suffered to a lesser extent; between 2002 and 2009, Newsweek lost 25% and Time lost 18% of its subscribers, while U.S. News & World Report shuttered its print edition and moved its operations fully to the web. What's more, evening TV news audiences also slid in 2008, even though it was an election year.

As a result, content quality and quantity have suffered, while subscription rates have gone up. Traditional media outfits have been less able to support costly investigative and foreign news items. By and large, newspapers have reduced news pages, eliminated entire sections and closed their Washington and foreign bureaus in favor of outsourcing.

Another problem, of course, is that when newspapers began to put their content online in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they allowed readers to access it for free. That decision has created a major dilemma, because consumers now feel that they have a right to free news content, yet online advertising does not currently generate enough revenue to support the free content model.

These are just some of the many challenges that news media companies are facing. And while this story strikes many as devastating, others find it inspiring. New technologies and business realities are forcing traditional companies to innovate, and new ones — from online news aggregators to Facebook news groups and dozens in between — are constantly emerging.

CONTINUED (Lots of adware and who knows whatnot)...

http://mashable.com/2010/05/26/how-to-monetize-news-media/

The Five Methods are detailed in the article above:

1. Erect a Paywall
2. Put Up a Semi-Permeable Paywall
3. Implement a Metered System
4. Remain Free
5. Create Better Value for Advertisers

As the anonymous tech guru noted, though: online porn was very profitable until it had to compete with free porn.

[canoeist52]

3. People who want more than sound-bytes and headlines for their news.

[former9thward]

9. You can get anything on the internet.

Headlines, heavy analysis, and anything in between. That said I subscribe to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. I like to read with something in my hands. I hate reading anything long on the internet. Guess I am a dinosaur.

[hill2016]

5. not sure

what this has to do with Wall Street?

[Octafish]

8. The owners can make more money off non-union scabs, A.

The owners pay lower taxes because ignorant Americans let Congress and administration after administration continue Trickle Down crapola, B.

The warmongers and banksters who love them get to stay out of jail without good journalists on the prowl, C.

[closeupready]

6. 1970's "Trog" was a horrible film, in which Joan Crawford shined. However,

there was a bit part in the film, after a press conference. A journalist runs out of the press conference to his car, and the villain stops him and asks the journalist to report some propaganda in service to his hidden, evil agenda; "No can do. My job as a journalist is to report what I hear and see."

Can you hear Lara Logan and Scott Pelly laughing hysterically at the naivete of it all?

[Octafish]

10. Here in Detroit, the GOP-appointed Emergency Manager ordered the power cut off...

Kevin Orr wanted to "to send a message" to the City. So he ordered the power cut off during the middle of the afternoon, affecting people in hospitals, in traffic, in elevators and about everywhere else. The thing is, there was NOTHING in the local papers, radio or tee vee about it. I know, because I searched and asked my friends in the business. One of my journo friends who told me about the story, in fact, lost her job at a local radio station for asking.

Nowling told local reporter Dennis Kraniak: “City grid customers were asked to reduce power, but failed to, so we had to move to intentional outages.” Smiling, speaking to the camera, another city official, Gary Brown, said that some buildings in the district were contacted and people were asked to turn off their air conditioners. He then says that people “didn’t respond as fast as we would like them to, so we had to send them a strong message, by turning off the power.” (Watch the interview with Brown on the video below.) When asked what he plans to say to the people still “trapped in elevators in 90 degree heat” a still smiling Brown replies that he is restoring power to those buildings.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/14/detroit-blackout/

My wife was downtown when that crap happened. I don't appreciate intentional power outages affecting her or anybody, especially when they happen on the orders of an unelected greedhead bankruptcy lawyer.

The fascist bastards acted like its their right to damage others' lives.

The great DUer ethereal truth was downtown when it happened.



PS: "Trog" was a wild film. I love Joan Crawford on the screen.

[brooklynite]

11. You appear to not know much about newspaper history...

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

The Plattsburgh Press-Republican

Newspapers have historically been incredibly biased, one way or another. Most cities had multiple titles, precisely to appeal to different segments of the population. Only in recent decades, after consolidation (driven by the audience preference for TV news) have they become, for the most part, bland and homogenized.

I have no issue with support of the newspaper unions, except to recognize that market tastes have clearly changed, and newspapers will need to continue to change to accommodate if you want them to survive. But I don't see newspapers as being some uniquely objective news source that needs to be preserved.

[Octafish]

13. You're the one who doesn't know history, ''I'm a member of the 1-%.''

Your self description, broolynite: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026118520

Newspapers are organized investigative bodies that act to check government power.

Learn about what Daniel Ellsberg did, thanks to The New York Times and Washington Post.

Whether either paper today is independent enough of government power to do so today is open to question.

[azmom]

20. Well that explains one Hillary voter. N/t

[Octafish]

21. you know, I did want to talk about Media Monopoly...

The Constitution mentions just one business by name. And its "owners" figured out how to privatize and monetize and ration out its utility: Truth.

(Ben Bagdikian, author of "The Media Monopoly&quot sums up with a look at what the media monopoly has done to the supposed foundations of our country. In politics, he points out, it is television commercials which win races. The average man on the street who runs for office, supposedly the hallmark of the democratic system, has no chance of winning without expensive advertising to build name recognition. And without advertising, magazines, newspapers and television news shows will not acknowledge the average-guy candidate at all. Bagdikian’s final caution is this: by creating a narrow monopoly of media owners we have also create a narrow realm of coverage.

SOURCE: http://www.is.wayne.edu/MNISSANI/MEDIA/Bagdirev.htm

And, as their numbers shrank and they became an effective monopoly, Corporate McPravda worked extra diligently to limit Truth's dissemination and, thus, increased its value for the owners; especially in election years. Thank you for seeing that, azmom.

[canoeist52]

12. Tough crowd, sadly. Keep doing what you're doing Octafish. Your work is appreciated.

[Octafish]

16. Ask Lewis POWELL: the Internet makes it easy to flush things down the Memory Hole.

If only we could, as he's likely as not roasting with Nixon and Reagan as I type.
The great DUer underpants brought this to DU's attention, way back when DU1 was new:

The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto)

The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971

Introduction

In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. [font color="red"]Anderson cautioned that Powell “might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice…in behalf of business interests.”[/font color]

Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.

Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building — a focus we share, though often with sharply contrasting goals.* (See our endnote for more on this.)

So did Powell’s political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. [font color="red"]Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment “right” for corporations to influence ballot questions.[/font color] On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.

CONTINUED...

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

It's why so many fish don't notice the water's polluted: It's all they know. And if CIABCNNBCBSFoxGOPnutworks have their way, it's all they ever will know. A newspaper sticks around -- go to the library to find out what happened on March 13, 1976 or whatever. It's there. If some secret Superspymaster wants to pull the plug on all Internet archived articles dated March 13, 1976 it's a lot simpler to send out a prompt:command than getting all the librarians to go along and rip out the page.

Very much appreciate you grokking the situation, canoeist52! From an old kayaker's POV, the youngsters standing up on their surfboards to paddle about don't know what they're missing sitting closer to the water.

[canoeist52]

23. I worry daily about them pulling that plug too.

I'm not sure why they've let it stay for this long.

And there's nothin' like being up close and personal with those water lilies.

[Octafish]

25. New York Times won't print Bernie Sanders' response to their question about Hillary Clinton's hair.

"When the media worries about what Hillary's hair looks like or what my hair looks like, that's a real problem." -- Bernie Sanders

You got it, Senator.

Please note how the NYT left out Bernie's response.

Who needs an informed citizenry? What do you think this is, a democracy?

[Shandris]

15. There is no trust.

Without trust, all a newspaper is is a web page with no ICANN data. Sure, I can read the Approved For Consumption view in more detail in a lengthy newspaper, but that is literally no different than reading from the National Enquirer, Buzzfeed, or Politifact. Just because The New York Times had a reputation back when people trusted each other doesn't make it any less of a glorified profit machine now, and no union will change that.

Under the current system, as long as a motive for profit exists and/or is possible, new media is untrustworthy and old media is dead.

[Octafish]

17. Excellent points and analysis. Trust is missing.

For me, it goes back to the assassination of President Kennedy. The mainstream media lied then and continue to lie to the present day. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and his sister, Rory Kennedy told Charlie Rose that their father, the slain president's brother and then-Attorney General, believed a conspiracy had killed JFK.

Gee. For some reason, PBS hasn't aired the Charlie Rose program and the tee vee stations continue running specials showing Lee Harvey Oswald did it. Same for the New York Times and Washington Post. Ignore that story that impacts us to the present day. For in between then and now, the Times swore up and down we were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin and Saddam Hussein was behind 9-11.

Thank you for your excellent reply, Shandris. You get it.

[Omaha Steve]

22. How did I miss this earlier today?

K&R!

OS

[Octafish]

24. Labor's POV missing from public discussion on Corporate McPravda.

Pulitzer's Legacy : The Decline of Print in America

Newspapers are cutting jobs left and right while wondering why their circulations are down. Maybe it's because they refuse to tell the truth?

By Matt Hutaff Dec 6, 2005

The Los Angeles Times announced yesterday it would close the doors on its Chatsworth plant and consolidate production into three downtown facilities, eliminating 110 jobs. This news comes on the heels of the Tribune Company's decision to cut 85 Times newsroom jobs from its workforce in November.

SNIP...

It appears it doesn't pay to publish.

Except it does. Despite the gnashing of teeth from traditional media about soaring costs, newspapers do turn a profit... just not enough of one for its shareholders. Newspaper chain Knight Ridder posted a 19% increase in earnings last year -- impressive by any Wall Street standards -- yet even that draws ire from investors. And while subscriptions and advertising revenue are down (a trend that started decades ago), those reading the paper are among the most lucrative and desirable demographics in the United States -- affluent, educated men and women.

So I find it amusing when I hear editors bemoan the state of print journalism. Cutting jobs to maximize corporate profits only result in crappier papers that survive in the short-term. Blaming the downturn of print's prominence in daily life on "the current business climate" is just deflection.

Heads up, Jeff: the reason people are abandoning both print and televised media is that they are no longer amused by the lies you continue to peddle about the state of our nation. They find the truth elsewhere and see your whitewash jobs as obvious and tired. Perhaps if you devoted some of your reporters to actually reporting how events really unfold you'd regain some of your readership.

SNIP...

The press has no one to blame but themselves for their disintegrating readership. People are tired of reading bullshit and even more tired of a disgraced institution propping itself up with passable reporting three years after the fact. They've moved on to better sources of information. And no amount of reorganization or job cutting will make a newspaper a viable source of news to someone who has tasted the real deal.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/01032_pulitzer_legacy__decline_print_america.html

2005 DU OP: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5542680

[Historic NY]

26. Who reads newspapers any more..

http://www.journalism.org/media-indicators/newspaper-readership-by-age/

http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2012/newspapers-building-digital-revenues-proves-painfully-slow/newspapers-by-the-numbers/

Readership is down and along with ad & subscription revenue papers can't afford to print. Many have taken to online subscriptions.

[Octafish]

27. Heartbreaking trend for those who value Democracy, like Thomas Jefferson.

The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.

SOURCE: http://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/302

News gathering ain't cheap. The price of not gathering and disseminating the news is much, much steeper for Democracy.

Perhaps the Internet will be able to step up. I certainly hope so. Thank you for the important information and links, Historic NY.