Thursday, April 15, 2010
Memphis Newspaper Guild Pushes Back Against Commercial Appeal's "Final Offer"
Posted by Chris Davis on Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 11:17 AM
The Guild's now-expired contract -- which has remained in effect due to an evergreen clause that would also be eliminated under the new agreement -- allows the newspaper to outsource any job from any department, but prevents current employees from being outsourced out of a job.
CA reporter and Guild president Daniel Connolly hopes the advertising campaign will encourage the Memphis community to take an active role in supporting journalists and other employees at the CA in their efforts to keep certain longstanding employee protections in place.
Memphis Flyer: What is the message you hope to send with this advertising campaign?
Daniel Connolly: The ads have slightly different messages depending on format and location. One message is simply to inform people that the company wants the unlimited right to fire people and outsource work to India and other locations. The other message is that the outsourcing will diminish the quality of the news product that thousands of Memphians depend on.
Flyer: What does the guild hope to accomplish via advertising? For a long time -- at least since AFL-CIO organizer Shannon Duffy came to town -- there's been a push to raise awareness. But advertising's no good if its only aim is raising awareness. We advertise because we want people to do something: to buy our product, quit smoking, or test drive a car. What do you want the people who see your ads to do? And if they do it how do you expect it to impact management at the CA and Scripps?
Connolly: The beauty of this type of advertising campaign, which relies on the Internet and social networking, is that you can create a family of people who care about an issue and are willing to do what it takes to help out. At first, the ads will encourage people to contact the publisher. We might ask them to do different things later on. It depends how this process goes.
Flyer: Hiring an advertising firm is expensive. Advertising can be expensive. There are a lot of people in our community who are out of work or who have taken pay/benefit cuts who certainly can't afford to hire a top tier D.C. firm to help plead their case. Are you convinced that this is the route forward? Have you considered that you might be sending a mixed or confusing message?
Connolly: People care about The Commercial Appeal. It reaches more people than any news outlet in the region. It is a public trust. There is a serious risk that its quality will be diminished, which would affect thousands of people, including advertisers and readers. We have an obligation to tell people that. Yes, we are trying to save our own jobs, but we think it's appropriate to spend money to tell people about this critical moment in the history of news in Memphis.
Flyer: Is there anything else you want to bring to the table regarding the advertising campaign?
Connolly: I just want to emphasize again that people care about The Commercial Appeal. Every time I bring up these issues in public, the reaction has been overwhelming sympathy. This campaign is about harnessing that power and making a positive difference for the newspaper and Memphis.
To anyone out there, I would say the following: This newspaper is yours, and everyone who participates in this campaign makes a difference. Stand up for it.
Comments (14)
Showing 1-14 of 14
Hire an out-of-town marketing agency to develop an anti-outsourcing campaign. Brilliant.
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That is *precisely* what I was thinking, midtownunited. Maybe I'm just turning into a cold-hearted asshole in my old age, but I have a hard time sympathizing here. First of all, that is -not- my newspaper. I don't know who on earth they think their target audience is, but it's not anyone I've ever met. Everyone I know reads it because it's the only game in town. I have never in my life heard anyone from out of town say, "Wow, you sure do have a better paper than the one we've got back home." No, it's usually, "Who reads that crap? Why is this on the front page? Memphis is strange."
(A side note: you enjoy a monopoly and you still can't make any money? Ooooh-kay. Whatever, dudes. That's on you.)
Secondly, the CA has consistently put out an inferior product ever since those weirdos from Spokane took over. Don't try to scare me by saying the paper will get worse because it's already terrible. If you want to get my attention, tell me how the paper is going to get better once you take it over from the knuckleheads who ruined it in the first place. Tell me that you want to wrest editorial control from people who aren't even from here. Tell me that you're going to turn it back into a newspaper instead of whatever it's trying (and failing) to be. That'll make me care more about what you're doing.
And yeah, this campaign could not possibly be more tone-deaf. If you've got the money to hire Obama's PR firm, you're doing a hell of a lot better than 99% of the people whose sympathy you're aiming for. Oh, so you don't want to be fired on a whim? Welcome to the world the rest of us have been living in this whole time. Back when my job got shipped overseas, it would have been really cool if there had been some local community organization whose mission was to inform the broader public about the dangers associated with all those free trade agreements that Congress was passing. Too bad there wasn't one.
Sorry, folks. You're on your own.
Can the campaign include the financial situation at the paper? Is this a choice between outsourcing and continuing to have a daily newspaper or backing the union and thus dooming the paper to bankruptcy? If we support the journalists, will that eventually force the newspaper to shrink its staff and coverage further? I'm not sure what would be worse- no local paper or a bad local paper.
Urbanut: Word from the CA is that is has always been profitable. The history of print journalism's decline suggests that you are presenting a false choice, although there's no question that the industry has fallen on harder than usual times and is facing difficult choices.
Adding: I know that was a question not a statement. Sounded like I was dissing, but I wasn't.
Totally understand- it may be a false question and one that the CA does not necessarily face, but in light of the Star Ledger's near collapse, The Boston Globe teetering on the edge and the almost continuous warnings concerning the economic health of newspapers in the US- well I just don't want Memphis to be the first US city to be without a full service daily.
If all of the people presently agitating for a better contract just said "fuck it" and started their own paper, I would be the first to sign up for home delivery. Hell, I'd get two subscriptions just to make a point.
I'm a pro-labor and pro-news guy, but I've just about made up my mind that this is not the place to have those fights. This is a losing battle no matter how you slice it. Use your guild contacts to organize a new venture, start up something new and better, and cut those greedy out-of-town sons of bitches out of the loop. They're obsolete anyway, so screw them. It doesn't take that much capital to do this anymore. To hell with negotiating with the management, you should ask your loyal readers what they want most out of a newspaper, deliver it to them, and make a fortune for yourselves instead of for somebody else who doesn't even give a damn about Memphis.
From Daniel Connolly:
Thank you for these comments. I can't respond to all of the points, but let me address a few.
Regarding the hiring of an out-of-town ad company: we were looking for the best, and this firm came recommended from our union at the international level. You can't really call it outsourcing - it's not as though we have an in-house advertising staff that we fired so we could hire this firm.
We wish all workers had the money and organizational structure to advocate for themselves the way we are doing, and we understand that most don't. Some people might see us as overprivileged, but all things considered, it would be irresponsible for us _not_ to hire the best firm we could under these circumstances.
One of the commenters asked:
"Can the campaign include the financial situation at the paper? Is this a choice between outsourcing and continuing to have a daily newspaper or backing the union and thus dooming the paper to bankruptcy? If we support the journalists, will that eventually force the newspaper to shrink its staff and coverage further? I'm not sure what would be worse- no local paper or a bad local paper."
The word we have directly from management is that The Commercial Appeal has remained profitable throughout the recession. The proposed cuts and outsourcing are meant to increase the size of profits.
Regarding the idea of starting a new entity: this is happening all over the country, and the Memphis Newspaper Guild had some early talks about it last year. (See our web site www.newspaperguild.org and find the relevant article under the section "Save the Newspaper."
I hope this helps. Thank you for the interest.
-Daniel
Sorry, I meant to write www.memphisnewspaperguild.org in the last comment.
-Daniel
They're a union, right? At what point do they go on strike? What would have to happen to induce a walk-out and shut down the paper until management is ready to make a serious offer?
What's the point of having a union if it can't accomplish anything, if it has to hire a marketing firm to try to generate public sympathy? Managers and owners care about one thing - profits, and the only thing that's going to get their attention is when those profits disappear. So far, they've been gradually disappearing, which gives them time to plan and adjust (i.e. lay-off, shrink and outsource). If the union went on strike, their profits would disappear overnight. That would get their attention.
Maybe they'll walk away at that point. If so, good riddance. You can take the money you're spending on a pointless marketing campaign and buy up their equipment at auction, start your own newspaper. Call it the Press Scimitar and get instant name recognition. Fight. Win!
If the marketing campaign works, great, but it seems to me this is merely being done for the sake of doing something. Oooohhhh, Obama's advertising company! Social networking! Maybe they'll even leverage... gasp!... a "FACEBOOK" page. Become a fan of the CA employees today and stick it to THE MAN.
I'm sure management's going to be sitting up nights, smoking Cubans and drinking scotch, wondering how in the world they're going to counter the big mean Facebook page. "Oh no, not the 'social networks!' What if they organize a flash mob? Whatever shall we do? (long pause) Bwahahahahahahaahaaaaaaa!"
I know. Perhaps if you taunt management, they will become so angry, they'll make a mistake. You could also build a large wooden badger.
An ad campaign should put some of its focus on how much money Scripps takes out of the Memphis community. Subscribers and advertisers pay dearly, but a lot of the CA profits leave Memphis and go to supporting other Scripps entities. The CA refuses to reveal its financials because it doesn't want people to know just how much money gets siphoned off and is not put back into the local product.
IMO, as a former guild member now laid off, the Guild lost a lot of clout with management when they didn't strike back in the late 80s early 90s to keep Scripps from taking over the Guild's $12 million pension fund. At least then they had some actual muscle to flex in terms of numbers. A union's power rests in the threat to strike. Even a one-day strike can send a message. Those who were around during the strike of the early 70s will tell you that the Guild got its best contract ever the following round of negotiations.
People don't care if their auto companies benefitted from slave labor during WWII. They don't care how their clothes are made, 9 year olds are efficient and have little fingers. They don't care if Wal-Mart funds the Chinese Military. They don't care if their chocolate is made by real oompa loompas.
Open an employee owned paper (really employee owned, not some UAL bs) and put the CA out of business that way. Or grab your testes and strike. If your gonna dream, dream big. You can expect consumers to pick the best product, but don't expect consumers to care about how the product is made.
You claim your way will produce a better product. Well, giddy up.
(BVW's 401K is up 47%, he should be the first investor)
I'm in on the wooden badger!
However if you guys at the CA don't want to go that route, then just like Auto said, I'd happily pay for two subscriptions for a good daily.
From Daniel Connolly:
To Mad_Merc - I'm glad to learn that you'd be willing to pay more money for the paper. I think a lot of people feel that way, and it may be one way forward.
To Jeff: Regarding the idea of building a wooden badger - that would certainly get some attention, though some unions prefer to use giant inflatable rats.
You can see examples here: http://archiblaster.blogspot.com/2008/03/g…
We don't have a giant inflatable rat - we'd have to call up our rat supplier to get one.
-Daniel
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