Any day, Gannett is expected to reveal how much it paid CEO Craig Dubow and other top brass for 2008 -- a disclosure certain to generate stories that some readers say are no one's business. "Who cares what they got paid,'' writes Anonymous@5:30 p.m. "Are you attempting to create a class warfare between management and the employees?"
Yet, The New York Times reports today, "tracking the private jets, lavish junkets and other trappings of what the ABC correspondent Brian Ross calls 'corporate royalty,'" are now full-time jobs for TV news division reporters. Just as Gannett Bloggers criticize CEO payday stories about Dubow (left), ABC viewers asked Ross to justify coverage of corporate high-rollers. His response: "I think it reflected their attitude of entitlement and failure to adapt to the times, a kind of a tin ear to what’s going on."Incriminating pictures stop the companies from denying the stories, Ross said, essentially catching them in the act. Yet, rather than trying to induce shame, he said, "what we reveal is that there's no shame."
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i hope you don't still call your self a reporter.
ReplyDeleteThe mainstream corporate media have long been "News of Wealth."
ReplyDeleteWealth: Notice the number of MSM stories about who has it, who's getting it, who wants it, who's losing it and how, how our clown congress is spending it, where it's going, what rich people are doing (Brangelina and etc.), how people without it are managing in these "hard times" (pick a decade)?
And the feel good stories are all about people giving other people things for free.
This fascination, nay, this perverse wealth fetishism is quite bizarre and not without social consequence, as we're learning not. This is a cargo cult of wealth.
Take it away and what are you left with? Cops and dog shows 4-H contests and city council meetings, things that actually matter in peoples' lives.
For me, USAT would be a better read if it took a watchdog approach.
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ReplyDeleteBoring
ReplyDeleteIt is all about celebrity.
ReplyDeleteIt could be Paris Hilton, or Britney or one of the Wall Street wheeler dealers.
Our nation has been trained by the Carl Rove administration to keep its eyes on the pebbles while history continues to roll a huge boulder off the cliff over our head.
And it also seems to me that Jim IS a reporter, but in the analytical sense. I hope he is so successful he is seen as a celebrity.
Had executive compensation been adjusted to reflect the fall in stock prices, revenue and income... layoffs could have been avoided and Gannett could have focused on putting out better products for its customers instead of cutting staff and gutting the papers.
ReplyDeleteThe way the executives chose to operate was... to hell with employees and customers we are going to take care of ourselves first.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteGiven what the corporate elites and their ilk have done to the country and our economy, more than a little class warfare is appropriate.
A good first step is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, giving working people a fair chance at organizing a union.
73s,
John M. Simpson
Former Deputy Editor
USA Today
I can't believe anyone these days would be so down on the thought of organizing unions, especially Gannett workers.
ReplyDeleteTo JMS. The employee free choice act is basically a type of election where there is no privacy for individual voters and the strong arm tactics of management will be replaced by strong arm tactics of a union. I believe a lot of managements deserved to get skewered but also realize that this act would lead to a different type of corruption. What is wrong with secret ballots? The other issue is that in jobs which can be outsourced and all manufacturing it's passage would end up being another example of the law of unintended consequences.. that is as unions are voted in hundreds of thousands of jobs would leave this country. I don't know what the solution is to the growing disparity between executive management and everyone else but I doubt that unions would fix it. Really strong companies would move operations, really weak ones would go under. Ask yourself this, if you were an owner or CEO of a comapny and you found you could no longer operate the way you want to and a government arbitration board that was heavily tilted toward union agendas was going to decide how you would run your business waht would you do?. You'd shrink your operations to a minimum in the unionized operations and move it to areas of the US or even offshore. I think this panacea to mangement deficiencies needs to be reconsidered as instead of lousy management many would now be dealing with lousier unemployment.
ReplyDelete"Are you attempting to create a class warfare between management and the employees?"
ReplyDeleteReporting on what someone gets paid is not class warfare.
What is class warfare is Wall Street and the CEOs who Wall Street owns, sweeping all the money in their pockets so the rest of us have nothing.
If America is to last as a democracy, the class warfare from the top needs to wake up to the fact that hoarding all the money will bring revolution.
Or perhaps we should be happy eating cake.
"i hope you don't still call your self a reporter." 10:19 AM
ReplyDeleteWhy should you care what anyone calls themselves. You don't make the naming rules.
You are not a copy editor: "yourself"
Jim,
ReplyDelete@ 3/13/2009 5:24 PM is correct. We ARE engaged in a class warfare and average working people are getting their butts kicked.
It's time to stand up and fight back.
This comment may have drifted a little far afield from the Gannett focus of this blog and if that bothers readers, I apologize.
I'd argue, though, the GCI's corporate and salary structure are but a microcosm of the issues in the overall battle.
I'd also add that although I was once a proud member of Labors International Uninion Local 322, when I became a "professional" -- a journalist -- I played a key role in defeating union organizing attempts in two Gannett newsrooms.
I deeply regret the naivete of my youth and the mistake I made. I sincerely apologize to those I led astray. I was wrong to encourage you to vote for management against the union.
The only hope to restoring economic equity and sanity to the United States is a vibrant union movement coupled with extremely steep inheritance taxes, say 90% on estates of more that $1 million.
73s,
John M. Simpson
Former Deputy Editor
USA Today
Great idea, John.
ReplyDeleteWork hard, make money, as you say --- more than %1,000,000 for your estate --- then give it to the good old USA while your family goes to the poor house with the leftovers.
Here's an idea for you. If you have more than $1,000,000, off with your head.
What a great incentive to succeed! I think Bill Gates and the Google guys would love that idea. Probably make them come up with even better ideas!
JMS's second post reinforces the point that was made about unintended consequences.. Anyone with any entrepeneurial streak in them would leave the country. Major corporate exec's would renounce their citizenship and become Swiss or Irish or Caimen Island citizens. Corporations would move their HQ's out of the country. It stuns me that anyone as experienced as JMS would think this would work. Pass those laws and raise taxes and watch what happens. People change their work' investing, business and lifestyle behaviors to maximize their welfares. It reminds me of a famous line in Hedrick Smiths classic book on the Soviet Union that he wrote in the 1960's or early 70's. When asked why Soviet workers didn't work very hard and were so unproductive one responded that "When they stop pretending they are paying us we'll stop pretending that we are working"! Why would anyone think that it would be different here. Increase tax rates, confiscate wealth and family businesses and farms and in a very short time there will be nothing left to tax or confiscate.Capital will disappear. I can't tell you what the answer is but I know what won't work. This is Forrest Gump economics.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough high estate taxes was one of the primary things that drove the sale of family newspapers to chains. So an editor that is bemoaning media concentration wants to formulate a tax policy that would result in the very thing that he criticizes.
ReplyDeleteI'm very glad he is now a former editor.
10:50 p.m. -- The idea that if you work hard you will be successful is falacious. Many of the rich in America today were born rich. They went to the best schools because their parents could afford it, they got their foot in the door with great companies because their parents had highly placed friends, etc.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying there aren't some extremely talented and hard working people who were born rich. And I'm not saying there isn't a small percentage of people who became wealthy with nothing more than brains and hard work.
What I am saying is that there is no guarantee that hard work will get you anywhere close to rich. The gap between classes is widening at an alarming rate in this country, as something like 85 percent of the population is living off about 25 percent of the nation's wealth. If this doesn't bother you, you're probably among the 15 percent who are hoarding the other 75 percent of the nation's wealth.
Because it often takes money to make money in our society, we can expect to see an even smaller and wealthier upper class in the coming years. We will also see a continuously shrinking middle class. I know increased taxes on the wealthy don't seem equitable, but it's one of only a few solutions that could stabilize the middle class in America.
Besides that, you'll have a hard time explaining to me why anyone needs all the money some of these ultra-rich folks make. What do you do with $7 million a year? Use it to acquire even more wealth? Buy frivolous things?
If most of these folks making well over a $1 million a year were taxed to the point where they were only making a million, they would still live very comfortable lives.
Meanwhile if somebody living on $35,000 a year could make the jump to $45,000, the impact on that person's life and the lives of his/her children would be remarkable.
There is no question that we need a redistribution of wealth in America. The trick is figuring out a way to do it in the most equitable fashion. I would be inclined to argue against government interference if the wealthy in this country had a sense of nationalism and were willing to reinvest in our country.
Most of them, however, think nothing of laying off American workers to hire cheaper labor in India. So, I have no faith that we can turn this country around without the government stepping in.
11:14 PM, that estate tax thing always was a bogus claim. We heard it regularly from the Lasses and Plangeres at the APP. Nothing prevented them from constructing a corporate structure that averted estate taxes on their progeny. They simply wanted what they wanted, the way they wanted it. In fact, I believe they created Press Communications out of the properties they kept (radio among them) and estate taxes were no hindrance, years before the Republicans in Congress and Bush temporarily cut the tax.
ReplyDeleteWhat caused families to sell their newspapers was almost exclusively Clinton's signing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that ended almost all regulation of media concentration. That alone is what brought public corporations to their doors, foaming at the mouth for a drink of the profitable businesses with ample physical assets to strip.
John Simpson, I applaud your honesty and integrity.
4:16 PM, you don't know what you're talking about re the Free Choice Act. It is obvious you haven't read the legislation, only the right-wing talking points, which you don't even understand to express correctly here. I hope you're not a newsroom type, but I fear you are, given the way our newsrooms have transformed in the past few years just like CNBC's newly notorious brand of "journalism."
Before Don and Jules sold the Asbury Park Press to Gannett, the press shop had a union vote. My friend there regretted voting against the union and soon recognized he did so more out of intimidation and fear of retribution than actually believing the company promises and bribes, which soon disappeared. Killing the union vote enhanced the price tag when they sold to Gannett soon after, I'm guessing.
ReplyDeleteThe shop folks were required by the company to attend many company propaganda sessions on the clock. And they had to meet individually toward the end with HR. It was in that private meeting that my friend made up his mind to vote against the union, and he later recognized it was out of intimidation and fear of retaliation, being on the spot feeling singled out like that. He didn't want to say anything about the positives to unionizing, so he convinced himself in order to convince HR.
I don't think folks who have been through the vote will tell you they think their "vote" was secret by the end of the process. They knew the company had spies everywhere, and they worried about hidden recorders. It was very stressful for them.
I don't think the Card Check system in the Employee Free Choice Act is a public vote as compared to a supposedly private vote now. But even if the cards were immediately put on public display, I think that would be an advantage. Companies are forbidden to penalize an employee for agreeing to a union. But at the APP, bosses had a good idea who planned to vote which way and some things that happened afterward probably were retaliation, but who could prove that? With Card Check, you would have immediate and clear proof of retailiation if you were fired or demoted after turning in a union card. Basically, you would have union protection the minute you turned in the card, and you wouldn't have to take a gamble that a majority of your co-workers go along in secret ballot to get the protection. And I think under this bill, you can rescind your card, like you might want to do if owners put some promises in writing. It seems like an improved labor bargaining tool to me.
Jim and readers of this blog,
ReplyDeleteRegarding my tax policy suggestion, please note that I am not advocating jacking up income taxes and the soaking rich.
Income tax rates are probably more or less where they should be after Bush era cuts are allowed to expire. The tax code does need to be simplified, however.
Social security tax should be paid on one's entire income and not be capped.
The point of a high inheritance tax is to prevent perpetuating great disparities in wealth. I'm not tied to the rate and size estate I proposed, it's just that the policy needs to move things to a more or less even playing field in terms of wealth every generation.
Some billionaires buy into this concept. Warren Buffet is leaving little of his fortune to his children, but rather giving the bulk to philanthropic endeavors.
I believe something along the lines of my estate tax policy would prompt many other wealthy individuals to do the same. They'd likely want to decide where their money went for what purposes rather than simply turning it over to the government. That would be fine. The key is combating the wide disparities that now exist in wealth in this country.
And as for a union, nothing more clearly demonstrates the need than GCI. I wish I had understood this in when I worked Binghamton and on Guam.
73s,
John M. Simpson