It’s a story worthy of Charles
Dickens. Time, Inc., the venerable
publisher of Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated magazines, is now an orphan,
having been sold off by its parent, the media mega-moron, and placed in the
hands of a perfect example of the evil step-father, Joseph A. Ripp.
The first ripples of the Ripp-tide
are a pair of announcements that epitomize what is wrong with American corporate
journalism, if not America itself in 2014.
Joe the Ripper’s second move was to
fire about 500 people, many of them working journalists. His first move as the orphan’s guardian had
been to bring on as Time’s “content editor” Norman Pearlstine.
What wrong with that? After all, Pearlstine had once been Time’s
editor-in-chief before the utter collapse of the print magazine economy and before
the poor little newsmag had been tossed into the snow. Well, for one thing, Pearlstine’s hallmark
decision as boss man at Time was to force his reporter Matt Cooper to give up
his sources to prosecutors in the infamous Valeria Plame—Scooter Libby (stand
in in every way but the consequences for his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney) scandal.
Short-term thinkers might salute
Editor Pearlstine’s decision since it did help convict Libby and further
disgrace his “shoot your friend in the face and flee” employer. But longer-term considerations point to worry
about precedents that destroy a source’s confidence that he can talk freely to
a journalist without being fingered later.
This worry may seem quaint in the days of NSA surveillance of “suspect”
reporters’ phone and email communications, and both the rigorous prosecutions
and worse "spy-on-your-office-mates" imperatives from the Obama White House, but
both at the time, and today, nearly a decade later, it seems to me to
be very important.
But that’s just old grudge. Far worse about Pearlstine’s hiring just days
before 500 firings is this, as reported by the Washington Post’s media blogger
Eric Wemple:
According to an SEC filing, Pearlstine has a
three-year contract that pays him (not less than) $900,000 per year, with a
“bonus target” of $900,000 and a $1.4 million “sign-on bonus.” He’s also
eligible for a “long term incentive compensation” with an annual target of $500,000.
It is absolutely inaccurate to say
Pearlstine’s hiring cost 500 less-paid people their jobs, but, rough-number
estimates suggest his pay could have kept at least 7 to10 working newspeople on the
job for at least the next 3 years.
Sad, but necessary, says Ripp,
about the layoffs, “When we enter the public markets in a few short months, our
success will depend on how investors view the momentum we are generating at the
new Time Inc.”
His logic? Investors need to see
management that is ready to shed blood, if that’s what it takes, to “succeed.” Of course, the investment in one executive
that displaces 7 to 10 workers could only count as a prelude to success to
people who have no investment in the quality of the product, only in
the return to… them.
This is the world, of the 1%, by
the 1%, for the 1%. It is not the world
of journalism which exists only to inform its customers.
My guess: it ain’t gonna work.
In fact, I’m gonna guess it won’t even
pretend to work for 3 years, which means to get his promised money, Pearlstine’s
lawyers are gonna have to squeeze Ripp’s Time lawyers to get those last millions.
As TV news proves every damned day:
reporting without reporters never works, no matter how many executives scream
and yell and bleed the product dry.
The title for Time’s final days: Corpse and Robbers.
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