17 Responses to “Dead Trees — Dead Times”

1. bunkerbuster Says:
   November 21st, 2008 at 2:26 am

   Sorry Marc, but weak as the Times news judgment might be, it’s self-evidently the best in the region.

   If someone were doing a better job of matching readers’ needs, they’d be overtaking the Times in readers and/or, but we all know that’s not happening.

   It’s the busines model, stupid.

   Newspapers across the board and around the world are struggling or flat-out dying.

   The suggestion that its because the news judgment, or writing or political balance isn’t up to bar is of no substance.

   News judgment is evolving anyway.

   Who’s to say that every major metro daily has to set a national or global agenda on its front page.

   Maybe the new regional newspaper/Web site will consider that other sources — CNN, NYT, WSJ, Times of London and so on — are already setting the national and global agenda for online readers. Online readers have global options — they aren’t the same captive audience that needed the world on its doorsteep in the form of a daily newspaper.

   I loved the old world of newspapers as much or more than most people did. But their day is done and better world of journalism lies ahead…

2. Sergio Says:
   November 21st, 2008 at 6:54 am

   I used to be held “captive” by the (former) world class Times. The corporate and gringo right wing WSJ, and NYTand tIems of London, it was not.

   If those fossilized assholes BB set “agenda”, we’re fucked.

   Frank Del Olmo must be rolling in his grave.

3. Liz Says:
   November 21st, 2008 at 8:10 am

   But wait, there’s more… I logged on early yesterday to see on the front page a story titled “LA High School on Lockdown”. Click on the text and it says Los Altos High is on lockdown because of warrents being served in nearby Hacienda Heights. Took them until after 10am to revise the story to say Los Altos High in Hacienda Heights on lockdown. The headline remained the same until after noon. Get a Thomas Guide. I’m sure Frank knew Hacienda Heights was not in the city of LA.

4. Woody Says:
   November 21st, 2008 at 8:40 am

   Marc, you don’t have the comment section working on your more recent post above. Wouldn’t you like to know what I think about it?

5. reg Says:
   November 21st, 2008 at 6:43 pm

   No.

6. Woody Says:
   November 22nd, 2008 at 10:46 am

   Marc has called me his “good friend.” I’ve never heard him call you that.

7. Howie Says:
   November 22nd, 2008 at 1:12 pm

   It’s like McCain’s famous twitch. He only says “my friend” to people he hates.

8. Jim R Says:
   November 22nd, 2008 at 6:10 pm

   Maybe Marc didn’t want to discuss the other clunker, missing in and Congress’s line-up, Woody.

   Mr. “$75 per hour union labor costs compared to $40 per hour non-union labor costs” Larry “The focus has to be on the economy, not about UAW contracts” Gettlinger.

   The American Auto Industry Execs won’t give up their jetset ‘benefits’ and neither will Labor Execs. Talk about spoiled-assed Americans.

   Let the reality of bankruptsy perform the attitude adjustment on these four clunkers. After these hearing in Congress, and Gettlinger’s dumbass ‘fuck you’ statements, it is the ONLY way tio save workers their jobs in the long run. Mrs. “never run even a lemonaid stand in my life” Pelosi is just not a substitute.

9. Randy Paul Says:
   November 22nd, 2008 at 9:53 pm

   Jim,

   A friendly suggestion: Dig a little deper next time.

10. Woody Says:
    November 23rd, 2008 at 9:56 am

    There you have it, Jim R. Randy found an article by the world famous Felix Salmon of the economic giant Conde’ Nast Portfolio.com that explains everything and is confirmed by information in the UAW website. Ignore the information that he doesn’t provide and the misleading implication of what he does.

11. Randy Paul Says:
    November 23rd, 2008 at 10:41 am

    If you have proof that autoworkers are beign paid in wages and benefits amounts that total for active employees $70/hour, including figures that have been vetted and sourced, by all means present it.

12. Woody Says:
    November 23rd, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    Keep moving the goal posts until you find something that meets your criteria, Randy. I’m on to you. Since you revise employees to active employees, which is stupid in itself, let me change the classification to workers–which is about half of them.

    Unions destroy businesses. I wouldn’t waste a minute declaring bankruptcy just to void the union contracts to allow the company to compete against non-union foreign manufacturers.

    Yes, there are mistakes from both management and labor. Management at the auto companies have made some terrible decisions (which doesn’t include private jets). Some of the management failures really couldn’t be avoided. But, I always resented unions strking for pay and benefits for its members in excess of their productivity and world market wages. Unions slowly suck the life out of companies until the companeis die. They never give back.

    Want to know where the domestic auto industry is going? Follow what happened to Bethlehem Steel (Selections).

    Well before that revamping, (Bethlehem’s president) Art Homer did something more drastic: He lowered executive pay.

    Confronted with what was happening to its business those many years ago, Bethlehem should have been tirelessly trying to unload its steel plants on some buyer. Today Walter Williams, 75, one of four former Bethlehem CEOs FORTUNE interviewed (he was No. 6 in the nine who followed Grace), says ruefully that the course of events at the company, and throughout most of the country’s integrated steel industry, seems to have been almost inevitable: “We were all stuck with our basic steelmaking–just too much to write off and too much to shut down.”

    The single piece of good news for the company as it burrowed was a gain in productivity–that is, reductions in the man-hours required to make a ton of steel. But this progress was impeded by both anachronistic work rules that the United Steelworkers of America defended tenaciously and capital expenditure needs that exceeded what Bethlehem could afford. Meanwhile the company’s per-head employment costs rose irrepressibly, not only because of the steelworkers’ tough demands but also because Bethlehem regularly extended whatever benefits labor won to its white-collar battalions.

    Grace did get an early taste of union power. He was forced in 1941 to let the steelworkers union into the company. Thereafter, Bethlehem, typically joining in industrywide bargaining, grimly settled into triennial negotiations in which the union worked unbendingly at keeping the maximum number of its members employed at the highest possible pay. That vault in wages shows how well the union succeeded. Worse–this is an industry in which that word is persistently relevant–the industry let itself be locked into work rules and narrow job descriptions that protected workers whom automation and efficiency should have made superfluous.

    The point is driven home stunningly by the contract changes that International Steel Group wrung from the steelworkers for those six Bethlehem plants it began operating in 2003. ISG’s CEO, Wilbur Ross, who characterizes Bethlehem’s contract as “terrible,” got the union to allow the cutting of job categories in his plants from 32 to five! As just one example, there is no longer a job category called electrician, which means that when a light bulb needs changing, a machine operator doesn’t have to call such a specialist in (perhaps from the far reaches of a plant) but can screw in a new bulb himself.

    The ultimate error was the steel industry’s approach to pension and health benefits.

    What it had instead was this colossal burden called “legacy” costs. Legacies are usually good when they come from a kindly spinster aunt. They are colossally bad when they are handed down by corporate hierarchies that both overpromise and fail to plan for the day that payment comes due.

    From 1980 on, Bethlehem had five CEOs who, on the one hand, agonized about the legacy costs they inherited and, on the other, created new ones by plant closings and layoffs and even by labor settlements that added to the benefit burden. It was a never-ending, expanding mess.

    Once in a while Bethlehem’s brass seemed to recognize that those rocks meant ruination. As early as the mid-1980s, the board considered putting Bethlehem into bankruptcy.

    You may reasonably ask whether the steelworkers should not have, for their own long-term benefit, eased off on Bethlehem way back when. One answer is that unions don’t care for “givebacks.”

    FORTUNE asked Ross and a number of other informed people whether they thought some really great businessman–say, a Jack Welch–could have come into Bethlehem maybe 40 or 50 years ago and saved this company. All thought the question intriguing, but unanswerable.

    So we asked Jack Welch himself. As a buyer of steel at GE, he knew Bethlehem. So, how about it, Jack–could you have done it? He immediately responded that he wouldn’t dream of being so “presumptuous” as to think so. Then he puzzled a while longer and finally said simply, “I don’t think Christ could have done it.” Amen.

    If what’s good for GM is good for America, then GM needs to dump its union obligations, as do other American businesses. It may be too late.

13. Randy Paul Says:
    November 23rd, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    Since you revise employees to active employees, which is stupid in itself, let me change the classification to workers–which is about half of them.

    No goalpost moving, Woodrow. It’s called intellectual dishonesty, something about which you know precious little. If Jim R is going to include retired employees in his comment – which is the source of that number – then he should define it as such. I called it for the bullshit it is.

14. Woody Says:
    November 23rd, 2008 at 7:13 pm

    How pathetic.

15. Randy Paul Says:
    November 24th, 2008 at 6:44 am

    Only according to Woodyworld.

16. Woody Says:
    November 24th, 2008 at 7:01 am

    Not only pathetic, but now sad.

17. Randy Paul Says:
    November 24th, 2008 at 8:24 am

    [BIG YAWN]

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