New Guild Prez: Union Seeking Alternative Newspaper Owners

By: Joe Strupp The Newspaper Guild is stepping up its efforts to battle pressure on advertising sales people while also putting a new emphasis on alternative ownership of newspapers in trouble, newly elected Guild President Bernie Lunzer tells E&P.

Less than two months after taking over the top post at the 30,000-member union, Lunzer says the guild is boosting the efforts of its advertising committee, while also creating a new committee to examine ways in which financially troubled newspapers can be saved with new ownership.

"We are as concerned as anyone with the ability of the market to sustain some of these properties, looking at alternatives and not just ESOPs," Lunzer said Monday. "We don't believe that that is the only alternative. There are non-profits, co-op ownership along the lines of what was used in agriculture for many years. We would like to establish a link back to the community."

Lunzer also announced that a guild summit would be held sometime in January 2009, likely in Washington, D.C., to discuss these and other issues. "The goal is to attract as many of the key players who bargain and organize and negotiate from around the country," he said. "And get some people who can look at the industry in a cold, critical way."

A new guild committee to review alternative ownership is forming and is expected to meet initially later this month, with regular meetings to follow. He cited the need for new ownership options in the wake of difficulties at Tribune, Gatehouse Media, and Journal Register Company.

"We want to review and consider new ownership models," he added. "We want to make sure we can give it every opportunity before we start to lose value. We may see more models that are Web-based products."

Asked if the guild itself could become an owner or part-owner of a newspaper, Lunzer said: "We don't want to preclude anything going forward if there is a chance of success. The feeling is that if the old system is dying off, what is the new system?"

Lunzer, who unseated 13-year-incumbent Linda Foley in the April election, also increased efforts by the union's advertising committee to challenge what he said were increased efforts at many papers to mandate incentive-based policies for ad sales representatives.

"You don?t get good performance out of sales people by threatening them, coercing them," Lunzer said. "We are trying to get publishers to be more productive and constructive."

Lunzer, who served under Foley as secretary-treasurer, claims papers are unfairly turning to commission-based ad sales models in a way that puts too much pressure on ad sales staffers.

"Performance-based discipline can be counterproductive," he said. "It has been used to justify removing people."

The guild is seeking to create more joint committees at newspapers in which management and the union can discuss such approaches and find policies that serve both. "They would review the way commission sales structures are set up to improve incentives and to help develop products such as more video advertising," he explained. "We need the companies to be profitable as much as they do."

Lunzer estimates that about 8,000 of the union's members are in an advertising-related position. "We want them to know that with companies that take the wrong role, we can push back," he said. "There has been more and more migration to commission as the solution to the problem, and it has been mainly negative."