Got the Blues: Guild Hits MediaNews CEO Singleton in Music Video

By: Joe Strupp Nowadays, when your local Newspaper Guild unit is having trouble getting a new contract, it's not enough to use the old standbys: picketing, leafleting, and even byline strikes.

You have to have a music video.

Enter the York (Pa.) Newspaper Guild, which recently reached two years since its last labor agreement expired at the York Daily Record, and decided to create a video to highlight it.

"MediaNews Blues" is no MTV hit single. But for the 50-person Guild unit, which is planning to hold its first bargaining session since June today, it is another way to take a shot at MediaNews Group, the paper's owner.

"We still believe they are stonewalling us at the labor table," says Tom Joyce, a local guild leader. "The sticking point has not even been salary. We are worried that they are laying the groundwork for staff reductions and killing the union."

The song, written by former York guild president Bruce Guthrie, now a Washington Post copy editor, and sung by Jeff Lebo, the husband of former guild leader Lori Lebo, is a direct attack at MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton.

Lyrics include:

I fell for the Record and she fell for me.
I thought our love was lasting and tender.
But it turns out things ain't the way they should be.
She's two-timing with a fella from Denver.

When the guys went too far, down at the bar,
I'd always rise to defend her.
But I'm feeling so low, now that I know,
She's sending my money to Denver.

Guild leaders have placed the audio over video clips of the union gathering signatures at a local county fair for a subscriber boycott of the Record. It can be found on YouTube.com here.

A year ago, to mark the one-year anniversary without a contract, the same unit created a non-musical video modeled on the "Scooby Doo" cartoon with Singleton as the "evil villain."

"I would probably suggest they spend more time negotiating a contract than singing songs," said Marshall Anstandig, MediaNews' key negotiator who arrived in York Thursday night for the latest bargaining session. "It is childish and immature. Doing that stuff is pretty silly."

Joyce said the union had gathered 2,200 signatures on the petition, which asks Daily Record readers to commit to canceling subscriptions or declining to buy the paper if the guild requests it. He said the guild has not made the request and hopes the upcoming talks will allow the boycott to be held off.

"We are going to see how the next two days go," Joyce says. "For the past two years, the company has blown us off."

The last contract, which ended in 2005, was a three-year deal that included annual raises of between 2.5 and 3%, the guild said. Anstandig said the most recent contract offer, which the union rejected in May, was also a three-year proposal, with a 2.5% raise the first year and 2% raises each of the following two years.

"They keep thinking they can get a better deal," Anstandig said.

The Daily Record is one of two dailies in York. The other, the York (Pa.) Dispatch, had been owned by MediaNews, but came under local ownership in 2004 when the two owners essentially swapped publications.