A war of musical chairs: NWA newspaper management sits first after merger | Editorial by George Arnold
Banner — By Contributing Writer on October 27, 2009 at 11:27 PM
By George Arnold
Special to Ozarks Unbound
When I was in first grade and the weather was bad, we’d be kept inside at recess to play indoor games. It helped burn off our childish energy.
One of the games was called “Musical Chairs.” You remember how it worked: We kids had to march around a set of chairs, always one less chair than there were kids. The teacher would play some music and, when the music stopped, all of us had to scramble for a chair. The one who didn’t make it was out of the game. Along with the kid, a chair was removed and the game went on. Eventually, it came down to two kids and one chair.
Musical Chairs wasn’t a particularly nice game. A lot depended on luck and where you were standing in relation to the chairs when the music stopped. But the game also favored the more aggressive kids. Anyone more willing to nudge somebody else out of the way — no outright pushing allowed, of course – tended to be the ultimate winner of the game. Dog-eat-dog was the idea. Be polite (or just physically smaller) and be sidelined.
I see where the newspapers in Northwest Arkansas are continuing their own game of Musical Chairs. The much discussed merger of the Morning News and the Democrat-Gazette goes forward. As usual in such business matters, more chairs are disappearing, too. The working stiffs marching to the music are now scrambling to make sure they still have a seat in the game when the corporate paperwork settles.
I lost my seat early on. Back in the spring, when the newspapers in Northwest Arkansas were bleeding money, a number of us newspaper types were let go. I was one of the fortunate ones. I’m older and I’d planned to retire sometime this year anyway. That didn’t make the initial blow any easier to accept. But I realize that my age and the preparations I’d begun to make on my own worked in my favor.
It’s my younger colleagues who must bear the brunt. Newspapering is shaking out in ways once never anticipated. Changing tastes and a grinding recession have cut into profits. Something had to give. Naturally, it’s those on the lower rungs who have to give the most. Only so many chairs in the game, you know.
For years, the employees of the papers – and readers, too – have been sold a bill of goods. They’ve been told the competition among the papers in Northwest Arkansas was a “war” in which, yes, the best would win, but the readers would come out ahead, too. This noble-sounding war involved no real bloodshed, just good old American competition.
We now see that it wasn’t a war in that sense at all. It was a game played by owners and management to see who could wind up with a lucrative business monopoly – the last chair. Now that the real winners are emerging, those benefits to the readers turn out to have been only temporary.
Here’s what a spokesman for management had to say this week: “Any time you have two companies merging together that by any industry standard was probably overstaffed due to the nature of the newspaper war, there’s going to be layoffs on both sides.”
Of course, a reduced staff will mean less news for the reader. And that’s not all. Subscription and advertising rates are expected to go up as well. The result? Both readers and advertisers will get less for more. But for those who will be out of their jobs – “down-sized” is the cold word for it — the effect will be more immediate.
According to the papers, all members of the staffs are having their current jobs terminated. Employees were being required to re-interview to get a job back. Not all of them will be left with a chair. So, when the spokesman said the companies needed a new business model to survive and prosper, he meant that the pain would be pushed downward.
It saddens me to see what’s become of the business to which I devoted most of my working life. Newspapers are looking more and more like the American auto industry. Once valuable and respectable parts of the national economy, both have been reduced to shadows of their former selves. These days, auto workers are negotiating away the remaining benefits they fought so hard for back in their heyday. Newspaper employees – those who will still be employed – are in no position to negotiate anything. They’re lucky they will still have a job. One way or another, they will be reminded of that every day from now on.
In a real war, the grunts on the front lines do most of the suffering, most of the dying. In newspapers these days, the working stiffs are the ones who catch it the worst. Those at the top always manage to hang on to theirs.
We’ll soon begin hearing which of the talented people on the staffs of the papers in Northwest Arkansas will lose their jobs in these unfortunate times. (We’re already learning about several of the higher-ups whose jobs are secure. No surprise there.)
The game goes on. Who keeps their seats this time?
George Arnold was a newspaper reporter and editor for 35 years. He writes from Springdale.
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18 Comments
Thank you, Mr. Arnold, and beautifully put.
It will come as no surprise that managing editor Lisa Thompson will carry on her legacy of piss-poor management onto the merged paper. How does one retain the title of managing editor without turning a profit ONCE during her tenure? Or having her husband, one of the paper’s least competent reporters, report directly to her? She is a disgusting leadership figure who has abused her authority and mismanaged her staff at every opportunity.
People misunderstand one thing about the Lisa and Doug Thompkins situation. Doug does not work for nor report to his wife, because he works for a separate organization, also owned by Stephens Media Group, the Arkansas News Bureau. It irks me for people to keep spouting this, because during my several years there of observing firsthand, I know who’s boss Doug was, and it wasn’t Lisa.
Glad to see you’re writing again, George, and writing locally.
It made my day to be able to read something George Arnold has written again! Insightful, concise, entertaining and illuminating–as always! Thank you.
As usual, George gets it right and expresses it well. He was the one bright exception to the traditional hallmarks of the Dem-Gaz editorial page: rambling right-wing nonsense and/or intellectually dishonest editori-rants promoting Hussman’s latest nutty cause. Getting rid of George was arguably one of the most boneheaded personnel moves ever made by the Dem-Gaz powers that be. Replacing him with Mike Masterson…well, might as well have put a potted plant in George’s old chair. The plant has more sense!
Nope: Two or three rounds of layoffs ago, Doug Thompson was moved from the Stephens Little Rock bureau to The Morning News’ payroll. His wife is his boss.
There’s so much brilliance in this analysis. Kudos.
The decision to let George Arnold is such a nice symbolic act for all the wrong moves that our newspapers are making. Congratulations to OU for featuring one of the better voices in regional journalism. We’ve missed you Mr. Arnold. Please keep contributing.
Insightful prologue-analogy, George. So good to see you back in your own write. How’s retirement? I heard thru the grapevine that our NWA Newspaper is but the predecessor for both billionaire families to go
mono statewide.
.
@ Pegomeg “I know who’s boss Doug was, and it wasn’t Lisa.”
Clearly, you’re not a golfer.
But your grammatical bloodbath sure shows your Morning News roots.
Lisa Thompson would not be hired into the mailroom of a real newspaper.
I don’t know Casual Friday but I already like him/her. I do know Alvin Polk and he’s dead-on accurate in saying Doug Thompson was solely a Morning News employee.
That’s irrelevant really since anybody that knows Lisa Thompson knows that even if he wasn’t technically her employee, she’d still act like he was. If there’s anything she actually does well, it’s arrogantly push people around.
This is Christopher Spencer. I’m the publisher of Ozarks Unbound.
I fully support and even encourage folks to express any opinions on this Web site they wish, but mean-spirited ad hominem attacks against fellow readers, even folks mentioned in stories, won’t be tolerated here.
You’re running the risk of being moderated Casual Friday. Let’s keep the discussion going, but keep the tone cordial, not antagonistic.
Thanks to all those who posted kind comments above.
eL, retirement agrees with me. I’ve caught up on a lot of at-home projects that I’d put off for a long time, my garden was reasonably successful with plans to enlarge it next year, and I’ve been doing a little free-lancing, such as this essay. Being free of daily deadlines for the first time in — well, I can’t really remember how long — has been quite refreshing.
George
Great column, George. I suppose it could said whether you’re working in newspapers or the auto industry, or even in banking – excrement always does roll downhill.
As for your statement, “It saddens me to see what’s become of the business to which I devoted most of my working life.” That makes two of us.
I really feel for those who, along with their friends and loved ones were impacted by faceless decision makers who will most likely enjoy their weekend without giving a grain of thought to those they decided to toss out.
Like the others, George, I was made glad by the opportunity to read your commentary. I also mourn the merger and the effect it will have on the quality and quanity of the news available to us. I have never understood why events like this seem to take their heaviest toll on the staff of the newsroom. I have always believed it is a newsroom staff of motivated and appreciated — chicken or egg? — reporters and editors that determine the number of subscribers, whether they be by home delivery or internet. I can’t knock anybody because the newspapers were always good to me but I am well aware of some motivated, well qualified people who are now looking for a new home.
Good to hear from you, Judge.