If you thought huge executive bonuses where just a financial sector issue, guess again. AIG and other financial institutions are making headlines while paying out lavish sums while receiving bailout money. Equally as puzzling is how media executives are being rewarded when their only answer to industry problems are staff reductions.
Photo District News has compiled a list of some of the major players in this game of executive rewards. Years ago the typical CEO of a company made 40 times what a worker did, now it’s not uncommon for that figure to be 500 times a workers salary.
This isn’t something new in the play books of media companies. Even when profit margins were very healthy companies would site the increasing cost of health care and ask their employees to pay more, all the while ratcheting up salaries and bonuses for top executives.
Recently The Plain Dealer was one of ten newspapers on a list of those who would close or go to online only. The paper responded in print immediately and pointed out that the story had no basis and was written by a blogger and picked up on Time.com.
All eyes were on the newspaper again when Advance Publications instituted furloughs and salary reductions on the heels of the company closing one newspaper in Michigan and reducing the print cycle at three others. Plain Dealer editor Susan Golberg talked about the newspaper’s future in an interview with WKYC-TV anchors Carole Sullivan and Eric Mansfield recently.
There is a tone in many of the stories written about newspapers that people don’t want a print edition with the amount of free news available online. Yes the online audience is growing, but for the most part print circulation isn’t tanking. It’s a revenue problem and Golberg points that out in her opening remarks.
Something has to give. For the life of me if I can’t figure out how a group of newspapers in Ohio can enter into a content sharing agreement, yet they can’t come up with a plan to create some sort of model to charge for online content. If they don’t want to spend money to make their print products better so they will be more attractive to readers and advertisers alike, they need to find another revenue source.
Further staff cuts aren’t the answer. Investigative stories like those discussed in Golberg’s interview will be no more, and we will be left with citizen journalists and bloggers that Golberg takes on in her opening comments as having no credibility.