More rounds of pay cuts

Gatehouse media, which included my former newspapers The (Brockton, Mass.) Enterprise and The (Fall River, Mass.) Herald News is planning pay cuts that amount to 7.75 percent.

http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2009/05/gatehouse_plans.html

Meanwhile, 10 percent pay cuts are coming to Portland, Maine newspaper owned by the Seattle Times.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009277672_apmenewspapersale1stldwritethru.html

Pay cuts of this magnitude will have to start driving talent out of the newspaper business, in my opinion. If content suffers, newspaper brands will lose their value as well. If a newspaper's brand doesn't signify that it's news content quality is superior to some start-up Web-based news site then it cannot compete.

No letup in sight

More layoffs, this time at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, as reported in Editor & Publisher. The cuts will amount to 20% of the staff.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003975725

Tucson Citizen all done Saturday

The final print edition of the Tucson Citizen is being worked on as I write this and the last copies will hit newsstands tomorrow.

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/

There will be an online edition that will "live" on.

I am shocked, shocked that JRC wants to break union contracts

On the other hand, going bankrupt in order to do it might be a little extreme.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090513-717256.html

The Wall Street Journal article says that JRC is asking a bankruptcy judge to void some union contracts covering about 220 workers.

We will see if this works

The Wall Street Journal to experiment with micropayments. An experiment that will be watched closely.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003971568

Bigger Kindle debuts

Amazon announces a new Kindle that may be suitable for newspaper and magazines.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015TCML0

And the Guild blinks

Not that they had much choice. I think the Times had the stronger hand to play due to the undeniable industry-wide stress and the economy.

Besides the fact that it could unilaterally impose the wage cuts after making its "last best offer" management did have a powerful argument that the very survival of the paper and therefore all the jobs was at stake. The lifetime job guarantee was not a popular position to defend to the public and it created a divide in interests between those older members of the union that it applied to and everybody else. As a general rule I think union bargaining positions are badly compromised when management can exploit a division in the ranks.

Of course, there's a very good chance that the union's sacrifices will be in vain and the paper may fail anyway, but like many emergency measures you simply do what you can now and hope for the best.

I do think there is a lesson to be derived from this for unions (and similar lessons from the fate of the autoworkers) and that is unions should be very wary of making concessions on current interests in favor of promises for the future. This is not only because management has an incentive to make promises that it cannot keep (and may have no intention of keeping. While this is a possibility, it's also true that even if management is making the promise in all good faith the simple fact is that management can't foresee the future. There is no telling what the economic reality will look like 10 or 20 years down the road. And if the money isn't there then to keep the promise it will not be kept. Only in the case of pensions -- which have some legal protection, insurance and government backing -- has that long-term bet paid off. Any promise not backed up by that kind of a system is at the mercy of conditions when the bill is due on the promise. And if the company is doing well, it's probable that the union could get a better deal then anyway.

Showdown in Boston

The Times Co. tells the Guild it wants a 23% cut in payroll. Guild says the 5% cut t has offered is more than the $10 million that management demanded.

Who will blink?

http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2009/05/globe_proposes.html

They will miss us when we're gone ...

... but we'll still be gone.

Expert sees decline of print newspapers accelerating: http://www.bizreport.com/2009/05/printed_newspapers_to_decline_at_faster_rate_than_initially.html

Amusing excerpt:
However, some nostalgia remains for printed newspapers. The study found that a large percentage of Internet users remain loyal to print versions and, when asked if they would miss the print edition of their newspaper if it were no longer available, 61% of those who read newspapers offline agreed - up from 56% in 2007.