Saturday, May 9, 2009

A plea for more information

Recently, I've put up a number of comments from people who obviously work in the distribution part of one of the three newspapers that are going to three days a week.

Unfortunately, when I post comments I can't see what article they are being posted to, so when they go to an article I posted a long time ago, I can't find them. Your observations are interesting about the new contracts being offered to drivers.

If you can, and feel free to continue to do so anonymously, please repeat the information in your previous posts here. It would also be helpful to know how the new contracts compare to the old contracts. If it won't compromise or reveal who you are give us a ballpark of the difference between what you made delivering the 7-day-a-week paper to what you will be paid to deliver the three-day-a-week paper.

Advertising sales people, feel free to do the same.

At this point, a little transparency would be a good thing for the company. I think it would be helpful to all if the company pulled back the curtain and let people know what everyone makes, publishers, editors, reporters, etc., then people could assess if everyone was fairly sharing in the pain.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

sharing in the pain. Is sitting home on a nice $250,000 check painful?

Watching Advance said...

http://www.tnglocal1.org/wagesnew.pdf is where you'll find the Cleveland Plain Dealer wages effective March 2, 2009.

Plain Dealer Wants $5 Million in Savings from Three Unions
Submitted by Roldo Bartimole on May 7, 2009 - 3:34pm.


The cutbacks at the Plain Dealer will include Teamsters and Pressmen in addition to editorial staff.

The total the PD management wants to attain: $5 million a year in savings from the three unions.

I’m told that the editorial people would consider taking cutbacks to make up the 12 percent management wants to save if management would promise no layoffs for two years. No deal, said management.

Anonymous said...

the drivers at the flint journal will not only be taking a hit from less days to deliver but also around a 25% hit in what they make each day depending on the number of papers delivered and where they deliver them, while the journal charges the customers more for getting the paper at home. add in that the routes are going to be smaller and some of us are not getting two routes and we might as well go do something else. we also have to deliver the weekly paper but only get eight cents per paper. i'm making 15 cents to deliver it now.

Anonymous said...

While we're at it, let's find out the going rate for freelance writers at The Journal. Seems there is quite a discrepancy in pay for various freelance writers and columnists. How is pay determined for them? And how can they find out what kind of readership they have, user hits and page views, etc., so that they can make a case for more money? The Journal has always kept its freelance writers at arm's length. Do they keep freelance readership information a secret on purpose, so that freelancers don't get big heads, and ask for their peanut to be increased to an airline-sized bag of peanuts?

Anonymous said...

Jim of L-Town, can you please post something about freelancers? What's the real story there? Are they valuable? Are they all paid the same amount? Who decides how much they are paid, and what is the criteria? Do they have any negotiating power at all?

Anonymous said...

Jim of L-Town: I'm pleading for more information!