Forcing Your Own Paper Out of Business
Posted on 01. Jun, 2009 by Matthew Sollars in New News Organization
From Jeff Jarvis, via Buzzmachine.
Drivers at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune are threatening a strike.
I could see a few interesting unintended consequences for the drivers: (A) This forces the paper out of business. They lose their jobs. (B) This forces the paper to go online only and the company takes advantage of bankruptcy to kill contracts with not only drivers but also pressmen and everyone except journalists needed for online (not just fewer of the print staff but new jobs: blogging reporters and community organizers) and sales (not just the sales people you used to have, but people who can support networks of community sales). I’d also try to get out of my leases and every other cost burden and come out of the strike and bankruptcy as a newer and smaller but now profitable new kind of news organization.
If I were a manager at the Strib and had Plan B ready, I’d darned near hope the Teamsters go out on strike. Buh-bye now. Hello future.
: LATER: I just spoke with a media attorney to make sure I wasn’t nuts. It also occurs to me that The New York Times Company should force the Boston Globe – assuming they were smart enough to set it up as a separate entity – into bankruptcy. It’s losing $85 million a year. They saved only $20 with recent concessions. It could bring The New York Times down. Time for radical surgery.
