Monday, December 31, 2007

You can't outsource local quality

Over 100 U.S. newspapers currently take advantage of the lower costs associated with compensating workers in overseas countries and the number is predicted to accelerate in '08 as more publishers seek to reduce by as much as 40% their ad production budgets.

Next up? Spec ad design, specialty publication design and pagination. Oh, and foreign workers will also handle editorial layout, headline writing and yes, even copy-editing.

MediaNews wants us to agree to a proposal that will allow it to outsource our work too, presumably so it can continue to lower its costs. But putting the responsibility for accuracy and truth in the hands of those who are so completely removed from the source of the news or event, increases the likelihood that quality will be sacrificed for efficiency.

We understand the need for efficiency in these tough times for our industry. But we stand for efficiency and quality, which is why the work should remain ours.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Catching up on news you can use

Here's a round-up of recent news items we think are important:

— New update here on Guild bargaining at the Monterey Herald, a unit of the San Jose Newspaper Guild.

— In case you didn't have time to read the whole story on the Guild's campaign in the Bay Area ("We're still here. Don't believe the hype."), Dean Singleton, responding to claims he is anti-union, said: "I don't know where that reputation comes from," he says. "We have unions at many of our newspapers, and we usually reach agreement with them at contract time. I don't see how that's anti-union."
Really? Some of the company proposals here in Long Beach may not be "anti-union", but they damned sure aren't pro-worker!

— The National Labor Relations Board ruled last week in a 3-2 decision that it is legal for employers to prohibit union-related e-mail as long as employers have a policy barring employees from sending e-mail for "non-job-related solicitations" for outside organizations. NYT

— Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher picks the top ten news-industry stories of the year. The upcoming Newspaper Guild election and MediaNews gets mention.

— We've added a number of resources to the right rail under "Links".

— And finally, One Big BANG will launch its new website January 8th. We'll be checking in often when the address is up.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

California paper chase

Hey, remember Keith Higginbotham? Formerly of the P-T? His was the first comment submitted in response to "Paper Chase" at SF Weekly.com., a long, but worthwhile read that does a terrific job summing up what happened when MediaNews attempted to use its clustering business practice in NorCal to achieve its long-term goal to bust the union, and what the Guild has done and is doing to mobilize and organize Bay Area workers. at the Contra Costa Times, part of the BANG (Bay Area Newspaper Group. The P-T and LADN are part of LANG, Los Angeles Newspaper Group).

From "Paper Chase" –

MediaNews had decided to merge the 120 employees of ANG and the 180 nonunion employees of the Contra Costa Times into the new BANG cluster. With 300 employees, the union, which had 80 dues-paying members, no longer had the official support of 50 percent of staff that it required for recognition. MediaNews had, without warning, shut down the union its members had relied on for salary and benefit negotiations and arbitration, right in front of them.

[snip]

In a recent telephone interview, Singleton defended his decision to stop recognizing the ANG union. "It was the only fair thing to do," he said. "We had to recognize the rights of the majority of employees."

[snip]

The 34,000-member national Newspaper Guild was so ticked off that it filed multiple unfair labor practices charges with the National Labor Relations Board, which are still pending, and put up the $500,000 for the One Big BANG campaign. Guild president Linda Foley says the campaign is perhaps the most important effort under way in the newspaper industry. "We have an organizing campaign going on in Southern California and ongoing negotiations in Pennsylvania, but what's going on in the Bay Area is serious," she says. "MediaNews just decided to withdraw recognition of a bargaining unit, and we don't intend to let that go."
We don't intend "to let that go" here in LANG, either.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Determined.

Local multimedia reporter, author, and blogger David LaFontaine says he's rooting for us. He thinks our posts "have an edge of hysteria and desperation about them." He writes: "Since most of my case studies have been about newspapers where things are going right, where they've decided to innovate and take bold action to try to reverse the course, I haven't come into contact much with the miserable side of newspapering. This blog certainly brings it all home, thought [sic]."

We are neither hysterical nor desperate. We're determined.

We are hard-working and innovative newspaper and online workers, united in our determination to achieve a fair and equitable contract. We're taking "bold action to reverse" the race to the bottom.

The "miserable side of newspapering" is working for a company that is concerned, committed and hard at work on maximizing its bottom line to increase its profits rather than investing in good journalism and service to the community. That makes us angry.

But that's not all: The fact is that we want MediaNews to come to the bargaining table with realistic proposals that will not just be good for Denver-based owner MediaNews Group, but good for us and our communities too. After all, we do the work, right? We passionately believe in what we do, but we need to earn a living.

So thanks for your support, David. And by the way, our colleagues at The New York Times (newspaper and online) are represented by The Newspaper Guild/Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, CLC.

Just like us.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Fill in the blank: What a(n) ______ week for the P-T

If your answer is 'busy,' 'unsettling, 'annoying,' or 'depressing,' read on:

- After suffering a mini-stroke two weeks ago and announcing his semi-retirement, P-T columnist Tom Hennessy got his send-off, an event attended by current and past staffers, upper management types, and Mayor Bob Foster - who ribbed a reporter for not using his quotes in Sunday's Hennessy farewell centerpiece (although his quote ran on A3), and for the 'Mr. Long Beach' title bequeathed to the celebrant.

Some people stayed for the memories, others dallied long enough to nosh on catering provided by Johnny Rebs' Southern Roadhouse. According to staffers who stuck around to the end, Hennessy reportedly said, "I don't know how you do what you do, given what you have to work with."

The reference to the P-T's contentious negotiations - and fall-out should MNG interests prevail - cropped up again when...

- Much to the chagrin of upper management types, The District ran a not-so-misty piece on what Hennessy's departure means to a local daily losing its local readers.

Hennessy's near-nonexistent solidarity with staffers is skewered in Dave Wielenga's own recollections. Alhough it's debatable whether it's hitting below the belt to knock a guy who just had a stroke, Wielenga drives home what many of us already know, namely that it's not only Hennessy's loss that readers ought to be saddened by, but also what his absence signals. Playing out in the backdrop of his departure are Denver-appointed leadership changes and contract negotiations that more or less punish local employees. Slashed healthcare, a "generous" offering of zero-percent raises, the ability to freeze and fire employees, and job outsourcing.

We get the message, all right (that we can't afford to get sick, let alone barely stay healthy, and a willingness to work under these conditions isn't enough). But it sends a message to readers and advertisers, too: that this paper may not their wisest investment.

- Thursday's big surprise wasn't the cost-cutting move of nixing this year's company Christmas party (though the company did put in for coffee and salad at an employee-organized potluck), but word of the abrupt resignation of P-T advertising director Francesca Lewis.

Lewis was formerly Modesto Bee's vice president of advertising, considered such a coup that P-T upper management felt her arrival warranted an article its Business Section. Her resignation after less than three months at the P-T was widely talked about by Friday, and with it the obligatory speculation that accompanies such office news.

A staffer from the advertising department summed it up with, "Means more work for someone. Merry Christmas!"

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Guild in bargaining at MN Monterey Herald

Take a look at the San Jose Guild's negotiations bulletin here. Bargaining at the Herald between the Guild and MediaNews began last month. Looks like progress is being made and we hear it is in large part due to the unity among bargaining unit members. We can make good things happen here, too, by standing together and standing strong!

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

What do striking Hollywood writers and journalists have in common?

Both want to be paid for their work.

In her Everyday Ethics column, PoynterOnline's Kelly McBride writes: "If industry leaders like [Associated Press CEO] Curley can't figure out a way to increase profit margins, the trend of cutting staff and freezing salaries will continue. Eventually salaries for journalists will fall. If journalists aren't paid enough to support a family (and in some places that's already a reality), the quality of the work is bound to suffer. Who Will Pay the Journalists?

This is our reality. We want a fair and equitable contract NOW!

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

We're not asking for houses

A few months ago, union stewards took a reporter's approach with a MediaNews Group Corporate Suit (a corporate VP here to negotiate our contract) by placing faces on a story about numbers and dollar amounts.

It was easy to find these stories in the newsroom. Staffers often commiserate over financial woes — losing a house, not being able to move out of an apartment in a bad neighborhood, choosing between starting a family and holding on to a job. We all know that reporting, photographing and designing a newspaper doesn't bring the big bucks. Journalism is a calling; it means you answer to your readers.

But the question about to whom we should be accountable — the media-consolidation juggernaut in Denver looking at the bottom line, or readers who know they can get their news elsewhere from the likes of LBReport.com or The District — puts journalists, city editors and you, the readers, in an interesting position.

Call it a business, call it a "noble vocation" - newspapering is about service. When staff levels are cut by attrition or by lay-offs, it does more than save money. It eliminates more journalistic presence in the communities the Press-Telegram once and now struggles to cover. Why would subscribers in Norwalk want a paper that does not have the staff to cover them, yet can run San Fernando Valley-centric stories? While MNG can reap savings through attrition and wage and position freezes in the short-term, what they are really growing is a less interested and dwindling readership.

P-T staffers don't want that. Reporters, photogs, designers, copy desk — even middle managers — we're all in it together. We all need to make a living so we can continue to report, to learn, to watch and write about the changes happening around us.

Our young and eager staffers need our veteran staff for mentorship. Our newsroom needs local copy editors to properly fact-check local articles. We need metro, sports and photo editors who are invested in this community. They are what makes the P-T uniquely the P-T.

And most importantly, readers are aware that their century-old local paper is ailing, and in the near future will receive its directives from the offices of its young sibling The Daily Breeze? How long until that newsroom is culled?

But back to the MediaNews Group Corporate Suit's reaction after hearing out staffers' stories.

He became angry, a union steward said.

"I get it. I get it," he recalled The Suit saying. "Look, even if I went around and bought everyone in that newsroom a house, it still wouldn't solve anything."

We're not asking for houses.

By nickeling and diming the "content providers" of a newsroom, the company is driving out employees who want to work but are becoming less and less able to support themselves. P-T staffers don't want to hear from an incoming editor, "Where do you see yourself in six months?" They don't want to be told that they have a counterpart at the Daily Breeze, and that having two is redundant.

If the shoe were in the other foot, and it was The Suit and his peers facing possibilities of wage freezes, out-of-town leadership from a supervisor who has no personal investment in your newspaper, they'd be pretty frustrated, too.

They'd get it.

LAT competition moving in?

The scramble to provide our community with exceptional local news coverage will no doubt heat up when the Los Angeles Times' plan to open a reporter bureau in or near our area gets implemented early next year. From an LAT memo: "The goal is to provide our readers a steady stream of high quality, sophisticated stories that will enliven A-1 and the California section for readers across Southern California."

We want to continue to provide our readers with a steady stream of high quality stories for our readers. We work damn hard every day to do so. But unlike the Tribune-owned LAT staff, we're underpaid, under-staffed and overworked (did we mention underpaid?) so its a constant struggle to cover the stories we know our community wants and needs.

Why is it a daily struggle, you ask? Because our corporate owner is on a consolidate-to-cut-costs mission that has stripped us of the needed resources that help us do our jobs — resources like newsroom support staff who answer newsroom phones, or fact-check or edit our copy — folks who free us up to do what we do best: gather and report the news.

Sure we want a fair and equitable contract with a decent wage and a guarantee that our work stays here rather than outsourced to who-knows-where, but the MediaNews corporate mandate that sucks all profits out of Long Beach (you can hear that big sucking sound all the way to Denver), has left scant resources here and the word is that more cuts will come. Makes it a tough task to chase down and cover the great local stories that are waiting to be told.

We don't want the LAT taking over coverage of stories we and our predecessors have covered in this community for 110 years. But nothing MediaNews has done thus far indicates it will care one way or another. Just show it the money.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Little movement in contract talks

In our mediation session Dec. 3, VP and company negotiator Jim Janiga made no movement away from the company's egregious proposals of zero-substandard wage increases, a wage freeze anytime during the term of the new contract and its demand for the right to outsource any and all jobs — all regressive proposals designed to screw rank and file workers at a time when MediaNews continues to buy up more papers.

But although there was no movement on the outsourcing proposal, the company did not reject out of hand the Guild's counterproposal which includes language requiring the company to first offer the work to union staffers.

In addition, a proposal put forth by the union that would provide photographers an equal share of the profits of pictures used on the newspaper's website and later sold to the public is under consideration. The company has offered 25%.

Your bargaining team — Don Jergler, Kris Hanson and Joe Segura, led by Local 9400 president Micheal Hartigan — along with the federal mediator are trying to pin down future bargaining dates. Stay tuned.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Meeting with editors cordial but slim on details

We thought it was time to get answers to questions we've had about the goings-on at the Press-Telegram lately. So last Thursday (Nov. 29) P-T Guild leaders sat down with publisher Dave Kuta and executive editor Rich Archbold. Torrance Daily Breeze editor Phillip Stanfield was also in attendance. During the cordial meeting, the company talked about several of its strategies that will continue to impact us (and affect or readers) in the coming months:

— consolidation of the Daily Breeze, Press-Telegram and LA Daily News editorial operations will continue. More design, copy editing duties and writing, including editorial pieces will be shared as LANG seeks to cut costs further;
Daily Breeze editor Sanfeld has been picked by MediaNews executives in Denver to oversee consolidation and admitted that "when push comes to shove, I have the authority" to determine future staff levels and operations at the Press-Telegram.
— as many of you know, Sanfeld has been conducting one-on-one interviews with P-T photographers, copy editors and reporters in recent weeks to find out "what they like about their job, what they want to do in the future and what they bring to the company". Sanfield promised not to throw P-T employees under the bus, however, when future staffing decisions are made despite his ties to the Breeze;
— the P-T advertising department will join us on the 14th floor by Feb. 1. Some advertising folks will occupy space on the 1st floor, where the P-T's former workers were located before being laid off earlier this year.

Consolidation. Here's what MediaNews' consolidation strategy has done to its Bay Area newspapers: After consolidating, MediaNews busts union in Bay-area newsrooms. We want our work and our jobs to stay here, right? Our hometown paper means a lot to us. With all due respect, it seems to us that if the P-T is important to MediaNews, the company would be investing in the P-T product and staff rather than consolidating it with out-of-town newspapers to cut out-of-town corporate costs.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Candy canes and conversations at parade

Thanks to Kris, Greg, Joe and Company who helped spread candy canes and word of our labor struggle to early parade goers Saturday on 2nd Street. We went out a couple of hours before the fun started and everyone we talked with — with very few exceptions — were interested in learning more about our fight to preserve our newspaper's long-held connections to the community it serves. Gave us a great opportunity to tell them we're fighting for a fair, equitable contract, too.

Friday, November 30, 2007

The MediaNews recipe for success profits

"If I had my choice between pleasing one banker or 1,000 journalists, I'd rather please the banker." — Dean Singleton on his business philosophy

American Rights @ Work reports on how the company destroys journalism, jobs and democracy. Here's the strategy. Sound familiar?

— Step 1. Purchase a small, but struggling local newspaper cheaply.
— Step 2: Buy all the local papers in a single geographic region.
— Step 3: "Cluster" to combine the operations of the small papers in a single geographic region under one roof. This way all the papers share the same staff, advertising, editors, and printing presses. Also, combining staff makes it easier to eliminate "wasteful redundancies," MediaNews Group's name for newspaper staff members.
— Step 4: "Consolidate" all of the papers of a region under one media group, essentially a subsidiary of the MediaNews Group. This media group houses only one staff writing for 5-10 papers.
— Step 5: Break up the union. Through clustering, union-represented positions are typically eliminated first, resulting in a smaller, weaker union. When consolidating, MediaNews Group combines union-represented staff papers with non-union papers. The tactic is usually the final step in killing the union - as the union-represented workers are now in the minority and cannot overcome the barriers that MediaNews puts in place to stop the union.

It's the plan recently implemented in Northern California. We can't let it happen here in Southern California. How so? Talk to a Guild rep for info about the union strategy.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Where are our stories going?

Our union colleagues at Northern California MediaNews papers have been told the same thing we have: the company plans to keep the reporting staff bare-boned. It will freeze positions vacated by departing staff members who have moved on. From One Big Water Cooler, we learn that MediaNews has signed a deal with Topix.com, a company that "handles online forums and comments section people use to discuss articles they read in the paper. The bottom line spelled out by Topix folks, is the deal is a way to stretch copy and reports further." Check it out, but then come back here and tell us what you think about yet another effort to expand MediaNews reach (read: $$$) without investing in the very people who provide the content — you and me!

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

MN editor wish: People ought to get paid what they're worth

Media News-owned Santa Cruz Sentinel editor Tom Honig has another wish as well: that people would stop complaining about hard-working, honest mainstream journalists long enough to appreciate the work they do.

The editor quit after more than 35 years at the paper. Nine positions out of 38 have been cut in the editorial department, Honig said.

Did that have anything to do with his decision to quit? One has to wonder. Editors don't like loosing staff; they are committed to serving the readers and have a vested interest in their staff members, but the economic squeeze Media News imposes at all its papers slashes staffs to skeleton-crew levels making it impossible to serve the readers. Unfortunately, MediaNews business plans only serve company coffers.

It's up to us to stand united in our commitment to great journalism and informed readers. But right now, it's hard to focus on that commitment when we're in a fight to win a fair and equitable contract that includes the pay raises we deserve. So unlike Honig, we're not leaving.

Email us and tell us what you think.

Friday, November 23, 2007

HI premium increases: One more reason to fight for a raise

It's an insult and we're angry. The benefits cost increase in January with no wage increase on the bargaining table will put many of us in the red. The increase drives the value of our current meager wage down further. We need to convince the company it has to share. We can only do that standing strong together!

Downsizing — with dynamite

MediaNews purchased the San Jose Mercury News last year. Now "the very top of the organization is saying, blow up the newsroom." WP

Monday, November 19, 2007

Dean: Lean or mean?

Northern California Guild leader Michael Cabantuan worries "about the future of both the people who work for [Singleton] and for the quality of journalism at his newspapers." Read his post at Media Guild Blog

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

MN merger triggers a seismic shift in Bay Area journalism. Is SoCal next?

A Palo Alto Online news analysis today suggests the Bay Area is ground zero for newspaper consolidation and the fears it has generated. MediaNews owns at least 29 daily newspapers in Northern California and nine in Southern California, and the company's unprecedented merger of news operations at a number of it's Northern California papers are its effort to "eliminate wasteful redundancies, streamline management, and redirect staff and resources to [it's] interactive services and other priorities, such as watchdog journalism".

Note that "watchdog journalism" is last on that list. And as a result of its skewed priorities, MN employs fewer reporters, editors and copy editors — wasteful redundancies.

"There's no variety, there's no differentiation... When all papers are owned by one person, there's just one voice," Harry Press, a longtime journalist and former editor is quoted as saying in the analysis.

What is happening in the P-T newsroom that suggests MediaNews has similar consolidation plans here in Southern California?

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Local, local, local — copy editors

Recall a report a few weeks in which the president of MediaNews Group was quoted as having said, "We have to find ways to grow revenue or become more efficient by eliminating fixed costs. Why does every newspaper need copy editors? In this day and age, I think copy-editing can be done centrally for several newspapers.''

Two days later an assistant managing editor of the Baltimore Sun, (where The Guild represents 500+ employees) blasted the MN Suit in a column titled "Just Sack all the Editors": the Suit "appears to understand money, his grasp of newspaper production seems less secure. To start with, if intensive local coverage — the current industry mantra — is the future of daily newspapers, then they will need local copy editors." (Check out the comments there too.)

Anyway, at The Committee of Concerned Journalists' website you'll find "Copy Editors: Keep them ... and keep them local" where a journalism professor writes: "If newspapers and Web sites are getting increasingly local in their coverage to survive, shouldn’t we also have copy editors become increasingly local? Instead of consolidating copy desks, why not have copy editors work more closely with reporters, not only in the main newsroom but also in newspaper bureaus? ... As stated by the Committee of Concerned Journalists, 'journalism’s first loyalty is to citizens.' Diminishing the role of the copy desk and divorcing editing from reporting are betrayals of that loyalty."

Guild continues its public opposition to media consolidation

Concentration of communications power in the hands of a few corporate companies threatens democracy. That was the message to FCC commissioners from unionists and activists at a recent rally at the Federal Communication Commission's D.C. headquarters. TNG Secretary-Treasurer Bernie Lunzer joined GCC/IBT President George Tedeschi and Jesse Jackson to oppose media consolidation and demand that FCC commissioners dilute the conglomerates' power by limiting their combined control of newspapers, television, cable firms and other information providers. "This is not a hypothetical fight. The destruction" of newspapers and other media by the big conglomerates "is already taking place," he warned. Mark Gruenberg of Press Associates, Inc. news service wrote:

Lunzer cited two examples were one mogul has taken over an area's media and fired staffers, curbed the flow of information and — in one case — used the staff firings to argue the Guild does not represent most workers any more, and thus should be ousted.

That case is in the San Francisco Bay area, where Denver-based MediaNews Group has taken control of all but one newspaper, and then laid off so many staffers from them – notably from the San Jose Mercury-News that he now argues the Guild does not have a majority of workers.

"So you'll have about a dozen papers with the same masthead and the same content" up and down California, owned by [MediaNews Group], Lunzer said.
Our neighbors and friends need to know that their valued source of information, their hometown newspaper, is at risk of disappearing into a cookie-cutter, not-so-local publication with little relevance to their community. Save the Press-Telegram!

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

United we stand

The company's outrageous outsourcing proposal seems to be glued to the bargaining table. So we're just going to have to convince the company that outsourcing our work and eliminating our jobs is simply not in the best interest of our paper and the community it serves. First, we'll wear this button proudly to show each other and the company that we stand firmly united against their unacceptable, thinly-disguised union-busting proposal!

Monday, November 5, 2007

Save the Press-Telegram!

We are asking the community to rally to our cause, a cause that goes beyond the issues at the bargaining table. MediaNews needs to know our community needs us! It is our job as journalists to provide the citizens of Long Beach and the surrounding communities the Press-Telegram serves with news and information they need to make educated decisions about important issues that impact their daily lives. Cutting staff, eliminating sections and leaving beats uncovered for months is not the way to serve the best interests of the newspaper community, its advertisers or its employees.

We are collecting hundreds of resident signatures on our petition headlined "Don't destroy my Press-Telegram". Download the petition here.

Newly purchased CT papers lose 7 top editors under MediaNews ax

The purchase from Tribune Company was barely finalized last Thursday when new owner MediaNews set about making cuts to consolidate at The Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time. In addition to the fired editors, 3 copy editors, 3 reporters and a paginator were not rehired. (MediaNews required all employees to re-apply for their jobs.)

In a statement we've heard time and again across the MediaNews empire, John Dunster, new publisher of The Advocate and The Time said, "The (newspaper) industry needs to consolidate. We need to find efficiencies in our organization that allow us to put our resources into what means the most to readers."

Sound familiar?

The fired editors had strong links to the community the papers served. Joseph F. Pisani, editor of both papers, saluted the departing editors for their dedication:

"There's a trend in the newspaper industry that suggests newspapers are 'better than they have to be,' that readers don't really want or need quality. But I can't imagine any of these editors settling for anything less than excellence. They were part of a 180-year tradition at these papers that will continue," he said. "They were the people who made The Advocate and Greenwich Time the best small papers in the country - all of them were committed to community journalism."
Commitment to good community journalism doesn't seem to be part of the MediaNews business model. We need to convince it otherwise.

Master of cluster, consolidate and cut

In BusinessWeeks's "Newspapers' Unlikely Hero", Singleton is said to have become a crusader for efficiency and collaboration as a way to save the industry.

"These days, Singleton has plenty of admirers—some of them in surprising places. Robert N. Giles, curator of Harvard University's Nieman Foundation, says "His reputation has been enhanced, and it has been enhanced out of performance. His bigger papers are doing well journalistically." Not all journalists agree with that. "He's shrewd. But you have to have shrewdness and journalistic passion to create really outstanding journalism, and I wish I saw more journalistic passion there," says Larry Jinks, a former publisher of the San Jose Mercury News who is on the board of the McClatchy newspaper chain."
Read it. Then tell us what you think.