Text by Sarah Phelan
The chips are down at the Chronicle–and it sounds like the California Media Workers Guild tried, but did not succeed, in striking a bargain with the devil.
According to a bulletin posted at the Guild’s website, Hearst Corp. ultimately told the union that even if its members agree to cutting the bejeezus out of the paper, it won’t be enough to save 150 layoffs and won’t necessarily prevent Hearst from shuttering the Chronicle. Hot damn.
No wonder a Chronicle employee by the fabulous name of Delfin Vigil posted a paid advertisement in the San Francisco Examiner, describing Hearst’s suggestion to close the 144-year-old newspaper as “unacceptable, unforgivable, or even un-American.”
Vigil suggests that Hearst give Chronicle workers the “right of first refusal” to takeover the paper, or “a newly formed group of past and present Chronicle employees who still believe in its value.”
So far, online comments suggest that the blogging public doesn’t care about or understand the value of newspapers. At least not in this modern world, where you can bounce around online to multiple postings and links for free, but end up, perhaps, never actually getting to the end of, or fully digesting, anything you read.
But as Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, points out, ” this nation will be in a world of hurt,” particularly concerning the battle to create open and transparent government, if major daily newspapers like the Chronicle go down.
As Dalglish notes, for the last 50 years, mainstream media organizations—not the alternative press—waged most of these battles, suing the government to access documents and information.
And then there is the fact that newspapers, unlike laptops, can be left in the car, taken to the beach or read in the bath without fear that a $1,000 piece of hardware will be stolen or destroyed. They make great hats, birdcage liners and fish wraps. They are recyclable and biodegradable. Heck, a drag queen once even made a dress out of a cover story that was written about her. And, occasionally, the words printed on their pages will bring you to laughter or tears, thanks to a team of largely invisible, but always overworked and underpaid workers.
Meanwhile, a “negotiations summary” posted at the California Media Workers Guild shows just how many pounds of flesh Hearst wants Chronicle workers to give—and then bleed them to death.