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Labor Day 2010: Puppets of the plutocrats America should just go ahead and cancel Labor Day. Really. Other than as an excuse for a picnic, what’s the point? Three hundred and sixty-four days a year, we honor plutocrats, and one Monday holiday in September is going to make up for it? Organized labor still may be fighting the good fight. But a lot of the working class is out there marching in the streets on behalf of the monied class, puppets of the plutocrats, angry as hell at all of the wrong people. Newspaper advertising decline tapers off in second quarter Spending on newspaper ads across the U.S. declined 5.6% in the second quarter, an industry trade group said Tuesday, marking the third straight quarter that the decrease has narrowed on a year-over-year basis. Total print- and online-ad expenditures fell to $6.44 billion from $6.82 billion in the second quarter of 2009, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Some Newspapers, Tracking Readers Online, Shift Coverage In most businesses, not knowing how well a particular product is performing would be almost unthinkable. But newspapers have always been a peculiar business, one that has stubbornly, proudly clung to a sense that focusing too much on the bottom line can lead nowhere good. Now, because of technology that can pinpoint what people online are viewing, newspapers can make more scientific decisions about allocating their ever scarcer resources. Net Neutrality Supporters Visit Rep. Henry Waxman When a group of ordinary citizens go together to lobby a lawmaker in his or her home district, that’s always a big deal. That's why members of the L.A. Media Reform Group joined representatives of Free Press, the Writers Guild of America West, Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles and citizen activists to meet with west L.A.-area Rep. Henry Waxman to speak about net neutrality. September 10: Last Day to Submit Ideas for the National Conference for Media Reform The next National Conference for Media Reform won't be until April, but the deadline for suggesting sessions, speakers or topics is this Friday -- so now's the time to jump in with any hot-button ideas you might have. Newark 'Star-Ledger' Offers New Round of Buyouts The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., is offering voluntary buyouts to non-represented, full-time employees who joined the paper prior to Jan. 1, 2006. While the Star-Ledger is not revealing how many buyouts are being sought, Publisher Richard Vezza wrote in a letter to employees that based on its performance over the first seven months of the year, the newspaper is projected to lose $10 million in 2010. This follows the Star-Ledger’s 2009 losses of about $9 million. Locked-out Journal de Montréal employees to launch free tabloid A long-running labour dispute at the Journal de Montréal is now expected to extend into another phase in late October -- with an announcement issued before the long weekend that the newspaper's locked-out editorial and office employees are gearing up to begin publishing and distributing a free, weekly, French-language newspaper to hit Montreal's streets this fall. The tabloid will be called Rue Frontenac. Labor Day may be a useful time to drag out of the attic a few old-time radical (even Marxist!) notions that, until fairly recently in our history, were common currency. Such as, Marx's "reserve army of the unemployed", as well as his ostensibly outdated "increasing immiseration of the proletariat" due to economic recession because workers cannot afford to buy the products of their labor. Sound familiar? Trumka: "Most Crucial Election in 75 Years" Labor and Democratic Party leaders are concerned - and rightly so - that labor's rank and file may not turn out in November to support labor-friendly Democrats in the massive numbers that played a major role in the election of President Obama and Democratic Congressional majorities in 2008. But they'd best beware, as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says, of the serious consequences of a victory by "the Republican party of NO." New 'social contract' needed in 21st-century economy, bishop says A new "social contract" is needed in today's economy, said Bishop William F. Murphy in the U.S. bishops' annual Labor Day statement. "Currently, the rewards and 'security' that employers and society offer workers in return for an honest day's work do not reflect the global economy of the 21st century in which American workers are now trying to compete," said Murphy, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. This time around, policymakers had knowledge their counterparts didn't have in 1929; they knew they could avoid immediate financial calamity by flooding the economy with money. But, paradoxically, averting another Great Depression-like calamity removed political pressure for more fundamental reform. We're left instead with a long and seemingly endless Great Jobs Recession. * Number unemployed: 14.9 million (up from 7.7 million in December 2007) * Portion of unemployed who have been jobless more than six months: 42% * Portion of unemployed who have been jobless more than a year: 21.9% * Underemployment rate: 16.7%; Number of under- and unemployed, marginally attached, and involuntary part-time workers: 26.1 million * Average weekly unemployment benefit in July: $306 Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper chain, which is comprised of the former CanWest dailies, has started laying off some employees and offering voluntary buyouts to others at some of its operations. Offers were sent to employees at the Victoria Times Colonist and papers in the Pacific Newspaper Group — The Province and the Vancouver Sun, reports said. Other sources said offers were made to employees at the Ottawa Citizen and The Gazette in Montreal.
Poor Labor Day. Gets no respect. It’s the Rodney Dangerfield of celebrations. The runt of the holiday litter. But it's also one day to celebrate what it is that we do for a living by taking the day off from work. Paying tribute not to some dead presidents or a religious fertility ritual or the valiant who have fallen defending democracy, but to the living. To us. The past, present and future of America’s labor movement The overall value of unions to society at large is not in question. Yet many, many generally intelligent, humane individuals do not share, what to us, is an obvious conclusion. This split is akin to that between believers in a Christian God and atheists. Each side harbors great minds, each side is certain of its rightness and rarely does anybody switch sides without a rare revelation involved. Philip Dray's new book, "There Is Power in a Union," explores some of the reasons for that dynamic, and their implications for all of us. Flying the Flag; Faking the News Edward Bernays is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the First World War, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, "Propaganda," published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the "intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society." U.S. gets a 'B' on workers' rights -- as do Turkey, India New York-based Freedom House has rated 165 nations on their workers’ rights records on a five-point scale ranging from “free” to “very repressive.” The U.S., with 37 other countries, is rated “mostly free,” but is sharply criticized for its weak labor laws and declining private-sector union density -- a decline the report’s lead author says is due to employer control of the union organizing process. The report also blames right-to-work laws. Buyouts offered at Postmedia papers in Canada Postmedia, Canada's largest newspaper chain, has begun job reductions at newspapers already picked clean by the Asper's Canwest ownership days. Today letters went out to employees at the Victoria Times Colonist, Vancouver Sun and The Province announcing buyouts. The basic provisions are 6 weeks pay per year of service to a maximum of $150,000, but few other details have been made available. Feinstein: No Shield Law for Bloggers, Wikileaks A bill headed for a vote in the U.S. Senate could extend protection to journalists who refuse to divulge their materials or sources, but contentions have arisen as to who should share that protection. California's Sen. Dianne Feinstein, unsuccessful at excluding bloggers from the bill, now wants an amendment excluding Wikileaks. NLRB rules that union ‘bannering’ is permitted under labor laws The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that a union practice of displaying large stationary banners at a secondary employer’s business is not coercive, and so does not violate U.S. labor law. The decision was issued in three Arizona cases in which union carpenters held 16-foot-long banners near establishments to protest work being performed for the owners of the establishments by construction contractors that the union claimed paid substandard wages and benefits. Kicked out, bought out or barely hanging on, investigative reporters are a vanishing species in the forests of dead tree media and missing in action on Action News. I-Teams are shrinking or, more often, disappearing altogether. Assigned to cover multiple beats, multitasking backpacking reporters no longer have time to sniff out hidden stories, much less write them. In Washington, bureaus that once did probes have shrunk, closed and consolidated.
Nation’s Only Black Staff Editorial Cartoonist Laid Off at ‘South Bend Tribune’ Ron Rogers -- who is believed to be the only African American working full-time as an editorial cartoonist at a daily newspaper --is losing his job at the South Bend Tribune. Rogers will draw his last cartoon for the Tribune on Friday. "I wanted to be the first black editorial cartoonist on the country since I was 14," Rogers said. "I just hope my departure doesn’t discourage somebody else who might want to do this." Cleveland's daily deserves credit for shaking off a legacy of lethargy, stirring the town to outrage and helping to change a government run amok. Over the years, I've criticized the PD, mostly because I once worked there and knew it could be better. But I've grown to appreciate its pluck, especially its reporting on the worst public corruption case in Cleveland's history. Despite its uncertain future, dwindling staff and shrinking ad revenues, the PD has stirred the community to outrage and played a key role in changing a 200-year-old county government -- thanks to new leadership without any binding ties to the city.
Century Later, Teddy Roosevelt’s Speech on Corporate Power Ex-Presidents almost always follow a small number of well-worn scripts. Some rush to cash in on their celebrity. Some do charitable good deeds. Some just lay low. Exactly one century ago, on August 31, 1910, we had an ex-President who took a brash and bold leap that took him far beyond these narrowly circumscribed roles. On that day, in the middle of Middle America, Theodore Roosevelt essentially called on his fellow citizens to smash the nation’s rich down to democratic size. Analyst: Paywall Subscribers Worth A Quarter Of Print Readers Even if newspapers migrate every print reader to paying online, they will still face big losses, according to one analyst. Annual income per paywall subscriber on TheTimes.co.uk and WSJ.com is just a quarter that from subscribers to UK quality dailies’ print editions, he concludes, while switching off the presses might save newspapers 25% of their total costs -- which is not enough to make up the gap from the smaller online income. Has Rupert Murdoch's paywall gamble paid off? As the fugitive businessman Asil Nadir flew back to Britain from his North Cyprus bolt-hole last week, Sean O'Neill, the crime editor of The Times, scooped Fleet Street by being the only print journalist on the plane. Yet those searching Google for the latest on the breaking story that morning would have found no sign of O'Neill's exclusive -- only follow-up stories by rival news organizations such as The Guardian and ITN Stop killings of Honduran journalists Honduran radio reporter Israel Zelaya Díaz was found dead Tuesday night on the side of a rural road in San Pedro Sula, making him at least the eighth journalist killed in that country this year. If past killings are any guide, his murder will go unsolved -- a pattern that suggests a deeper breakdown of law and order, undermining Honduras' desire to put last year's political violence behind it. Next big thing? TV-newspaper staff mergers Newspaper and TV newsroom mergers could become the next big thing as profit-pressed publishers and broadcasters seek to cut costs and strengthen their digital presence. But will hybrid newsrooms live up the promises of producing better journalism? The performance of the longest-running major newsroom merger -- the combination 10 years ago of the Tampa Tribune and WFLA -- is far from encouraging. Board majority finds union’s annual renewal requirement for dues objectors was unlawful The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that a union violated its duty of fair representation in requiring nonmember dues objectors to restate their position every year, despite their express desire to have the objection continue from year to year. The ruling grew out of a case in which a union member had informed his union that he wished his objection to continue indefinitely; the union responded that all dues objections had to be restated annually. Newspapers’ sale deadline extended for 2 weeks The formal sale date of The Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News has been extended for two weeks to permit the prospective new owners more time to resolve contract issues with five unions. The closing deadline for the sale had been today, but Chief Bankruptcy Judge Stephen Raslavich extended it until noon Sept. 14 at the request of Philadelphia Media Network Inc., a collection of 16 financial institutions that bought The Inquirer, the Daily News, and the website Philly.com. Media Manipulates the 'End' of the War in Iraq Sadly, it is not merely the president and others who have a political motive for perpetuating the myth that the United States has ended our national nightmare in Iraq. More troubling has been the performance of the mainstream media, which, in print and on television, have been witting pawns in this massive deception, reporting on the war as if it were truly over, celebrating this historical moment and ignoring crucial details. Poster Boy for Debt No More, GateHouse Media Gets Rating Upgrade GateHouse Media, which took on heavy debt to fund a newspaper buying binge just as the industry was about to tumble into its worst-ever recession, received something Tuesday that would have seemed extremely unlikely just last year: a ratings upgrade from Moody’s Investors Service. Moody’s upgraded GateHouse’s “probability of default rating” to Caa3 from Ca which while an improvement is not exactly a ringing endorsement. Bankruptcy Court Appoints Mediator for Tribune's Talks with Creditors The court overseeing Tribune Co.'s increasingly contentious 19-month bankruptcy case appointed a mediator Wednesday to assist in the Chicago media giant's talks with its various creditors. U.S. Bankrtupcy Judge Kevin Gross was named mediator for the tangled talks. Why are Latin American democracies suddenly attacking the free press? Here’s a puzzler. Latin America has never been more democratic: of 34 nations in Central and South America and the Caribbean, all except one (Cuba) are constitutional democracies, with laws guaranteeing open elections, independent courts, legislatures, and freedom of expression. So why do so many governments still trample on citizens’ rights, bully journalists, harass private business, and generally lord over hearth and home?
iPad Dailies: Ripe For Innovation All of the major western newspapers have an iPad app now: the New York Times, Wall St Journal, Guardian, USA Today, Financial Times, and others. There are also new forms of news services that have arisen based solely on the iPad's touchscreen interaction and multimedia capabilities: Newsy and Flipboard come to mind. In this post we'll look at how some of the leading newspapers are using iPad, what the user experience is like, and what could be improved still.
Michael Eisner Close to Tribune Co. Takeover Michael Eisner is ready to cross the finish line. An announcement on the former Disney CEO becoming the chairman of the Tribune Co. is imminent, a person familiar with the talks has told TheWrap. "Right now, it’s going to be Eisner,” the person said. "The lenders are going to try to take the company. It's the only way they are going to get some of their money. But they're not ready yet." Rupert Murdoch's pay falls by 6% to £10.9m as British newspapers suffer While Rupert Murdoch's newspapers laid off journalists and fought their way through a global advertising recession, the Australian-born media mogul endured a modest degree of personal belt-tightening: his take-home pay dropped by 6%, to $16.8m. Although still a hefty sum, Murdoch's annual pay packet was his smallest since 2003. The 79-year-old billionaire's salary was unchanged at $8.1m, but his performance-related bonus fell 20%, to $4.4m. For all of their flaws, unions give voice to workers, and not just their members. Their "small d" democratic strength is a vital counter to the special-interest big money that has so distorted our politics. And their revival is central to building a new foundation for this economy, one that will ensure that it works once more for working people. Trying to exclude WikiLeaks from shield law stinks One of the odors emanating from Washington, D.C., these days is from journalists marking their territory. It doesn't seem all that long ago that representatives of the newspaper industry would have recoiled from working with Congress to deny legal protection to anyone who leaked confidential or classified documents. Today, however, they seem happy to be doing so. Teamsters', machinists' contract rejections hold up closing of newspaper deal Stephen Raslavich, the federal bankruptcy judge trying to shepherd the Daily News and Inquirer to new ownership, met for three hours yesterday with lawyers, union representatives and business executives, but the parties emerged from the private discussions with little to say about the newspapers' immediate future. Today is the scheduled closing date for a deal that would turn over the papers and their Web site, Philly.com, to a new company called Philadelphia Media Network. Star Tribune asks court to block grievances The Star Tribune went back to U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Monday seeking an injunction to prevent its mailers union from filing grievances at odds with the union's existing contract agreement with the company. The company said in a court filing that Teamsters Local 120 has filed more than 50 grievances that "seek to undo the very core" of the 2009 agreement that cut production costs by more than $3.3 million as part of the newspaper's bankruptcy reorganization plan. Local news rivals doom publisher pay walls While newspaper executives have agonized for the better part of two years about whether to charge for their costly content, every indication is that portals, local broadcasters and other media companies have no intention of asking anyone to pay for access to their increasingly ambitious local sites. And that means newspapers simply won’t be able to charge for access -- especially when their own stories are likely to become freely available within minutes at competing sites. Not on His Watch, USA Today Founder Says Allen H. Neuharth, 86, the former Gannett executive who founded USA Today nearly 30 years ago, had some tart words for the people now in charge of his beloved paper. When USA Today wrapped its front section in an advertisement for a Jeep last month, obscuring the entire front page, Mr. Neuharth fired off an angry letter to the paper’s publisher, David L. Hunke. He called it “the low point in any decision any USA Today publisher has ever made.”
In the Tax Debate: A Blast of Fresh New Air Until this summer, no national pundit -- at least no pundit in good standing with the chattering class -- would ever dare suggest a federal tax rate on America's top income bracket higher than 39.6%, the level in place under Bill Clinton. Now pundits and the policy wonks who hover around them are openly singing the praises of top tax rates calibrated at 50 or 60 or even 70%, a level that would double the current 35% rate on top-bracket income. As Schaumber Leaves, NLRB Drops From Five To Four Members The National Labor Relations Board, plagued by years of vacancies, enjoyed just a brief two months at full strength this summer before losing another member with the departure last week of Peter Schaumber. Schaumber's second term on the board expired Aug. 27. The board's membership now drops from five to four: three Democrats and one Republican. Pressmen reject Philadelphia newspapers' contract offer Another newspaper union, representing pressmen, voted overwhelmingly Monday against a contract offer from the prospective new owners of The Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. The pressmen voted, 74-9, to turn down the offer, joining the newspapers' drivers and machinists in rejecting tentative contracts negotiated with Philadelphia Media Network Inc. Internships: indentured servitude or worthy right of passage? Loath to “waste” a summer, hundreds of us join the throngs of college students nationwide who find internships during their time off. While some are formal, established programs with corporate gyms and company cars, others are tossed together by an office manager and shaped by the intern’s personal input. Internships in journalism, it turns out, are either the chance of a lifetime or slave labor. U.S. should shield all its journalists By protecting journalists and sources from government intimidation, prosecution and incarceration, passage of the Free Flow of Information Act would further protect the rights established in the First Amendment and ensure transparency in government at all levels. These protections should be the law of the land -- all of it, not just of individual states. No New Reorganization Plan as Tribune Co. Continues Talks With Creditors Tribune Co. backed off its threat to file a take-it-or-leave-it reorganization plan for its emergence from Chapter 11 Friday, saying in a memo to employees it would continue negotiations with its creditors. “Given the ongoing nature of those discussions, we have decided not to file any amendments to our plan at the present time,” Tribune CEO Randy Michaels wrote. “We'll continue to keep you aware of developments in the Chapter 11 process as we go forward.” |
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