Dont Forget Most Old Media is Union Shop

Dear old TIME magazine is slimming down, according to The New York Times.  Writes reporter David Carr

Time Inc. management, with the help of air cover from the consultants from McKinsey, is trying to cut costs to reflect brutal realities in the mass magazine business. At the end of the month, there will be significant layoffs at the magazine division, and it will not end with Time’s 280 editorial employees.

You can imagine that American Thinker editor Thomas Lifson isn’t exactly in tears. 

Does the world need TIME? I can’t think of a reason why. I have to wonder if McKinsey [TIME’s expensive consultant] didn’t present shutting down the magazine as one of the main options for management to consider.

The thing to remember is that Old Media is organized in a hauntingly similar way to Big Auto.  The help is all unionized.  You may not realize this, because when journalists write about labor relations they do not add a little tag "full disclosure: reporter is a union member," which they would do if, say, writing about their alma mater.

Yes.  Any time you read an article by a big-foot journalist you are probably reading words written by a member of the Newspaper Guild.  The guild is now part of the Communications Workers of America.  That means, of course, that they are probably being paid way above what the market would bear.

And that makes the situation of the MSM even more tricky.  Because they are stuck with a cost structure that is way out of line with reality.

Back in the old days the only way you could get your name in print was on somebody else’s dead tree.  And the barriers to entry in the dead-tree business meant that the union journalists could charge monopoly rates for their services.

Those days are over and the dead-tree titles are desperately trying to slim down.

Here for instance, is a report in Editor and Publisher about print unions complaining about the slimming down of The Wall Street Journal.

The union [IAPE] representing staffers at the Journal took out an ad today in a rival, The New York Times, calling into question Dow Jones’ commitment to quality journalism.

Well, surely you wouldn’t expect them to take out an ad in the Journal?  And you surely don’t expect them to take a "proposed increase -- 400% according to the IAPE -- of health care costs" without complaint?