The Dow Jones Union and the Lessons of Labor

Capital, in the Age of Capital, seems to be an unstoppable force. So many analysts, understandably, have said that Rupert Murdoch's ability to win Dow Jones is inevitable. Money, especially big premium money, will just have its way. There's a lot of evidence to support that idea.

In the old days, when union membership was almost twice what it is today (12% in 2006, compared to 20% in 1983), Labor itself got a capital L. No longer.

So against that backdrop, it's good to see the spunk of Dow Jones union, the Independent Association of Publisher's Employees, CWA Local 1096. Responding to Murdoch's comment that while he loved the Journal, the stories were just too damned long, IAPE president Steve Yount said:

"I'm afraid Mr. Murdoch doesn't understand why The Wall Street Journal is The Wall Street Journal. Not everything is five paragraphs and a picture. Dow Jones did not become the most trusted source of business news and information in the world by serving up News Nuggets."

Of course, both Yount and Murdoch are right, sometimes. But it's not story length that's at question here; it's who pays the writers to write those words. Now the IAPE is actively recruiting alternative ownership to Murdoch, with Ron Burkle first to bite.

IAPE's activism is a good thing, but comes with a caveat. The Newspaper Guild first tried to bring Burkle into deals -- Knight Ridder and Tribune -- and failed, maybe in part because it was the Guild. After all, any new buyer of newspaper assets has to look at efficiencies -- revenues are tumbling everywhere.

As those revenues have tumbled and as the industry has reeled, neither Capital nor Labor has been very innovative in considering new ways out of the box. Sure, the Guild -- to its credit -- has finally opened itself to new ideas, but its clinging to outmoded work rules and practices for so long diminished its own power. IAPE itself protested some of the reorganization put into place by DJ Consumer head Gordon Crovitz, moves that seemed sensible.

Now maybe -- given layoffs of a quarter of the newsroom at the Chronicle -- and cuts across the nation, Labor may be coming to a new realism.

I was struck by a piece in -- what do you know -- the Wall Street Journal on May 9, a Page Oner described the resurgent power of the United Steelworkers Union. Quote reporters Bernard Wysocki, Jr., Kris Maier and Paul Glader*:      

At a time when organized labor at times seems a feeble anachronism, the USW is exercising plenty of power, by playing for keeps with the capitalists. Its strategy, rather than simply to pound the table for higher pay or threaten strikes, is to block takeovers, take sides in bidding wars and fight for board seats.

The union also muscles its way to the negotiating table in bankruptcies, billing itself as a "creditor" whose claims are workers' lost wages and benefits. In its most sophisticated tactic, it cuts deals with private-equity players and other financiers. "If you're not in the game, you're really going to get really screwed," says Leo Gerard, president of the 850,000-member union, which represents workers in chemicals, paper, aluminum and several other industries in addition to steel.

Exactly. Now the Steelworkers aren't newspaper reporters. Their industry maintains a better economic base, and their legacy contracts give them power newspaper unions don't have. Still, it's the mindset that's important here.

If Newspaper Labor is to help save itself and the industry as well, it needs to change -- right now. It needs to think like Capital. Its Burkle initiative is one step, and there had better be many more to come. *In celebration of the reeling art of journalism, I'm including names of reporters in stories cited as a new Content Bridges policy.