Oh really? Let’s review.

First Jarvis.

>>>>Those people want to write there and do so because they get value. You want to shame them out of it?

Then the response

>Actually,that’s exactly what I want to do!

Maybe you changed your mind. Maybe you mispoke. Maybe something else, but you weren’t talking about shaming Huffington.

> I won’t reduce yours to defending the Davos crowd at the expense of working writers and creative people.

Since when are the Huffington post writers “the davos crowd”?

This is certainly true.

At our company a veteran, respected consultant recommended disabling the “reply all” function on everyone’s email. Money well spent!

At this point, can anyone really believe in the wisdom of the market? There’s a big difference between cost – or price – and value. For example, music generates a lot of VALUE for YouTube and Facebook. But not much MONEY – labels and musicians don’t get paid. My own reporting generates VALUE for many other sites, which steal or paraphrase it. But I do not receive MONEY.

@ Jeff, look at this: http://gawker.com/5275790/will-arianna-huffington-be-paying-you-this-month

Time for you to ask some tough questions of Arianna as well as newspaper publishers. We’re waiting.

As for school teachers and AIG executives: school teachers are worth their weight in gold, but so many people are willing to do that noble job for so little pay, that the markets have taken most of the money off of the table. My (suburban NJ) hometown recently had an opening for an elementary school teacher and got 450 applicants. As a taxpayer, why would I dream of raising the salary on a job that gets a 450:1 applicant/opening ratio? AIG executives are a much rarer breed (I’ll skip over the crack about “losing billions” and simply point you here and here, where I hopefully debunk this myth that AIG’s sole purpose was to steal money from the average homeowner and put it in the pockets of some nameless, faceless executive). If an executive opsition at AIG opened up, far fewer than 450 people would be considered qualified, much less interviewed. As such, the pay that smaller group would demand in order to go work for AIG (as opposed to UBS or Barclays or some other institution) is much higher.

I’m happy to debate the wisdom of free markets with you in blog comments – it’s an interesting intellectual exercise. The empirical evidence, though, is squarely on my side.

@ Jeff, please save lines like “welcome to the future” for your Power Point presentation. I’ve been living here – and making a living – for quite some time.

Here’s a great example of a journalist holding Queen Huffington I accountable: http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=136968

Why aren’t you asking any of these tough questions?

The claim was that unions are good today because they provided some good in the past.

My point is that that doesn’t matter – either they’re providing good today, or they’re dead weight.

I note that non-unionized folks get benefits. And, thanks to Obama, their employers will get loans on better terms.

Jeff is right that the new economy is hastening this along, but the concept is as old as Supply & Demand itself.

As for
>>>You want to shame people out of writing and speaking out of their own passion and pleasure because you think you own the right to writing?

Oh, come on – I don’t want to rob people of passion and pleasure. I’m talking about shaming Arianna Huffington, who wants to turn that passion and pleasure into an IPO. I’m talking about shaming Facebook, which ha asserted that it owns every word of that passion and pleasure. I’m talking about shaming Jimmy Wales, who has turned that passion and pleasure into a flailing for-profit venture (Wikia), an expense account that has been questioned by his nonprofit group and a series of attempts to alter the record about his own past.

One of the things I do for fun is work on restoring an old convertible. This is my passion and pleasure. On a good day, my car gleams. But if I showed up at GM and volunteered to work for free, most people would say I was a moron for letting them take advantage of me. Same goes for Huffington’s cyberscabs.

One more thing; I’m troubled by how often you cast any criticism of your position in conservative terms. If you won’t reduce my argument to defending the priesthood, I won’t reduce yours to defending the Davos crowd at the expense of working writers and creative people.

Actually,that’s exactly what I want to do! Our sense of shame, until we lost it, was a very powerful way to reinforce social norms, including salaries. And this is very much about economics rather than emotion. There are only so many ways to make sure someone doesn’t undercut you in the labor market: Block others from entering the market (AMA, bar associations), negotiate lifetime employment (university tenure!), get a geographical advantage (plumbers, etc.), form a union (see above) or get your friends to set your salary (CEOs). Without any of these, I think shame is very powerful. So I think it’s worth trying.

This has little to do with innovation. Look at Gawker: Very innovative. But a look at employee turnover suggests it’s not a very good place to work. Now look at most glossy magazines: Not so innovative, much better money, benefits, job security, etc. As more innovative companies like HuffPo succeed, I think it will be terrible for the salary of the average journalist, unless pressure is put on people to stop working for free. Hence my word of the day: Cyberscabs.

In addition, many of the things (esp. here in the UK) we take for granted; paid lunch break, holiday and sick pay, 5 day week and so on came from unions and workers fighting hard. IMHO we owe some respect to that legacy.

Thanks for the reminder Jeff…

When I first read the drivers were threatening to strike, it reminded me of the typesetters union back in the early 70s (71 I think) here in Mpls., striking right at the beginning of the corporate annual report season. They thought it a good time as all public corporations have to produce their report within x days of the end of their fiscal year and most were at the new year so march/april. They thought that provided leverage. Photo typesetting was just at its infancy, all small non-union shops and somewhat experimental, not many using it.
I was a designer doing annual reports, I had to get it done (by law), I had no choice but to go seek out cold type. That strike drove all of us designers to cold type and hastened the demise of hot metal and the typesetters union.
That strike made cold type acceptable. That lead to a flurry of innovation in typesetting systems and flexibility in what we designers could do. That innovation in digital type lead to the Mac and desktop publishing and digital type display on computer screens and website display.
So, drivers, please do strike and lets get on with the future here in Mpls.

Here is a video your readers might enjoy. It certainly pertains to this topic. Basically, it discusses which newspapers are leading the way in online and print readership, and it talks about which newspapers are in danger of going out of print.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmrqoDgkbJg

Thanks,
Chas

Why must you be so condescending? Well, duh, there is no business if it’s not profitable. I’m not referring to this particular example. I’m saying unions are not the blame for business ills. Nor does offering benefits to employees make businesses unprofitable. Bad management does.

>So what? That doesn’t make them good today.

I’m not even sure how to respond to that. It really makes no sense. Offering benefits to your employees is not a good thing? Wow!

As for Huffington: Welcome to the open market. Those people want to write there and do so because they get value. You want to shame them out of it? This, still, is about emotion, not economics. Journalism will survive and prosper only if it finds its place in the new economy. Protesting won’t get us there. Innovation will.

>>>What a ridiculous line of cant. Another of your picket signs. One cannot object to unions resisting change (as one may object to management resisting change) without being accused of such as this?

When you say that you “object to unions resisting change” (as you now mildly put it), the change you’re talking about is no unions, isn’t it?

My picket sign, if I have one, is that I’d like to see those who deserve the blame share the pain. When it comes to the NYT, for example,I hear far more about “inflated” union salaries than I do about the decisions to buy the IHT, build a fancy new headquarters and send Tom Friedman to Dubai to interview a sheik and a couple of cab drivers. And yet whose salary gets cut? That’s not cant, Jeff, that’s asking the hard questions.

Here’s another one: Why isn’t anyone picketing Huffington, who undermines salaries by inducing people to work for free and has reputation for treating employees like household help? At the very least, shouldn’t someone question her habit of presenting herself as some kind of progressive?

Does this change ideas, comments and potential outcome?