January 25, 2023
'Boston Globe' Challenges NYTCO 23% Pay Cut
- by Erik Sass @eriksass1, June 10, 2009
The tide of dissatisfaction is rising at the Boston Globe, where members of the Newspaper Guild -- the largest union, representing newsroom employees -- have written a letter
to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the chairman of the New York Times Co., protesting the company's handling of recent negotiations over proposed cuts to pay and benefits, and asking Sulzberger to take a
personal role in ongoing negotiations. The request comes after the NYTCO revealed that it has no immediate plans to close the Boston Globe, as once threatened. However, the company also faces a challenge to the unilateral 23% pay cut it adopted as an "Alternative Final Proposal" after the failure of the recent negotiations. The Newspaper Guild, representing 690 newsroom workers, is challenging the pay cut by lodging complaints with federal regulators. If the pay cut plan is blocked or unwound, the threat to close the Boston Globe could come back on the table.
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On Monday, the Newspaper Guild voted against concessions sought by NYTCO management including an 8.3% pay cut, a week of unpaid furlough, big slashes in 401(k) and pension contributions, and an end to lifetime employment guarantees for roughly 190 employees. The NYTCO first warned in April that it would have to close the Boston Globe unless it obtained $20 million worth of concessions from the various unions at the newspaper. Some Boston Globe workers doubted the company would actually close the property, and complained that management has not carried the same burden as rank-and-file employees in pay cuts, reduced benefits, and layoffs. Nonetheless, the vote was close.
The NYTCO is also said to be preparing to put the Boston Globe up for auction, according to a report in The New York Times, with plans to solicit bids over the next couple of weeks. NYTCO is also trying to sell its 17.5% stake in the Boston Red Sox sports franchise, which includes valuable property in Fenway Park. Both sales are being advised by Goldman Sachs, the Times report said.
The letter to Sulzberger reads, in part: "We're all too aware of the awful economic climate and the precipitous challenges to the newspaper industry. Most of us went into this work because of our love for it, not for the money. We never expected high salaries; we just wanted reasonable pay, enough to make ends meet... We're asking you to call off the lawyers, head off a bitter fight, and come forward with a plan that would attract a bit more support from the Guild."
As an SEO and seeing the overall decline and marginalizing of newspapers to near insignificance, I can't say I have any sympathy for the NYT or Boston Globe.
The industry is antiquated, it has failed continuously to adapt and is increasingly marginalized by blogs and even search engine "news search".
Profit is above all, the most important thing for a company - it is any company's "raison d'etre". Newspapers have failed to adapt to increasing revenue models and are now suffering the consequences. Like the dinosaurs of the US auto industry, the RIAA, and others - news papers need to accept their far less ubiquitous role.
News, after all, is CHEAP. Newspapers made sure of that when they created the AP and Reuters and other syndication networks. The AP and Reuters, for example, allow newspapers to republish (syndicate) articles from other writers to fill in the gaps. Sure, it made sense at the time of creation AND allowed papers to have content and advertising real estate.
But with the Internet and particularly, with blogs and CMS technology, syndicating content became even easier. The value of written news plummeted.
There is also, of course, the opinion that newspaper journalists are increasingly writing pure junk. The Stephen Glasses and Jayson Blairs are not isolated examples.
More recently, a college student demonstrated journalism's disgrace when he posted a fake quote on Wikipedia shortly after French composer Maurice Jarre's death. Major newspapers worldwide republished the quotes without tracking down any sourcing.
Even the HBO TV show, The Wire, poked at the newspapers' decline on season 5.
Along with TV, cable news, and specialized news websites, the age of the overall newspaper is over. Paying for "general" content is not worth the money. Paying for specialized content is.
The revenue models are also old and obsolete. The old models depended on advertising and subscription fees never made a dent to the bottomline. But in the age of the Internet, search and web display ads are more valuable to advertisers.
This is one of the fundamental problems with newspapers which is that content is meant for readers, but the newspapers' REAL customers are advertisers who want to reach the readers. By making content readers dont' want to read and by not giving more value for advertiser dollars compared to search and website display ads, newspapers have critically wounded themselves.
The fall of newspapers will continue but it's more of a slow descent. Fragmentation and specialization is necessary. Newspapers can no longer be the aggregators of news. That role is taken over by search engines and blogs.
The real business model for newspapers is to charge for access to the news - but not charge the consumer. Charge the news distributor. This is easier said than done - and will require a smaller and leaner newspaper operation. But if newspapers want to continue to exist, they need to make adjustments.
On a personal note, it's always nice to see unions get busted. Hopefully, in the aftermath of this economic slowdown, we'll see more unions destroyed. Unions, like newspapers, are ancient dinosaurs that need to adapt and adapt to global economic and competitive changes. Lifetime guarantees and all that? Things like that should be over with.