"The St. Louis Post-Dispatch" appears to be slowly driving it's parent corporation Lee Enterprises into bankruptcy. The Post has resorted to placing advertising stickers on the front page in an effort to bolster declining revenues. (See previous posts about the meaning of advertising on the front page of a daily newspaper). I've said before the Post-Dispatch has no integrity. But, now I would say it is going broke AND has no integrity.
On top of this, the paper's employees have voluntarily agreed to week long furloughs for all Newspaper Guild members at the Post. Labor has a contract with the company, but for some reason agreed to have it's members take a week off of work without pay. To me this is the height of stupidity on labor's part. The employees did nothing to drive Lee's stock down to less than 50 cents a share. This is a management problem and management needs to pay the price. Lee Enterprises should stick to running the "Park Hills Daily Journal" and similar small town operations.
If I were a guild member at the Post I would be getting rid of the current leadership and setting up a slate of candidates to replace them at the next newspaper Guild elections. But, then it may be academic since Lee appears headed for bankruptcy.
1 comment:
Sometimes the working class needs to give up something it won earlier for the good of the whole.
-Fred
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