Jan. 22: After months of largely theoretical existence, the nonprofit Bay Area News Project leapt toward reality this week by announcing the hiring of its top leaders: CEO Lisa Frazier and Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Weber.

Following the exit of founder partner KQED from the project, the group also said it will  supply stories to the new Bay Area sections of the New York Times.

Frazier, a partner at consulting firm McKinsey & Co., began helping structure the Bay Area News Project last spring, after San Francisco financier Warren Hellman pledged a $5 million seed grant.

Weber is perhaps best known in the Bay Area as the founder of The Industry Standard, a dot-com era magazine famous for its generous salaries and extravagant rooftop parties.

Read more about them here.

Karl Fischer: It’s finally here — Starting now, an anonymous salary survey
for BANG-EB employees is live on the revamped OneBigBANG.org website.
Please pop over some time before Monday 2/25 and click on the survey link
in the upper right-hand corner.

I’ve heard a lot of people wonder how well or poorly they are compensated
relative to their peers. Here’s your opportunity to find out. I hope most of
you will use it and encourage your friends to use it.

This survey is not scientific, but the more who try it, the more accurate it
will be. It’s anonymous, so we have no way of telling who votes. We can
tell if someone votes more than once, but that’s about it. So you’re on the
honor system.

Salary parity remains a top concern for folks around the company. We all
would like better pay, of course, but that’s a separate issue. People want
to know that they’re paid fairly, relative to others in the company who do
similar work. And there is reason to wonder. I’ve heard a lot of different
salary numbers while making the rounds, and from what little I have heard,
pay is all over the map. We’ve never had a pay scale at the Contra Costa
papers, so we have no real sense of what compensation we should accept
for the work we do.

Knowing where we’re all starting from — through this survey — is a first
step toward knowing what is fair and realistic pay in our company.

Traditionally, the only way to get a large raise is to get an outside job offer.
If management wants to keep you, they bump you up. There’s nothing too
wrong with that system; employees with the most to offer wind up with
better pay. But it doesn’t reward loyalty. Nor does it reward naivete — if
you assume the company will just take care of you, you will wind up behind.

The adage that you never get treated better than the day you walk in the
door applies here, and it makes sense. The company must offer competitive
wages to newcomers or they won’t accept the job. What is competitive can
change rapidly, particularly in the Bay Area. We know, for example, that the
company currently offers a new reporter about $40,000 — considerably more
than when I got hired.

It’s good that management pays attention to the need to raise the starting
point. Trouble is, the cost-of-living raises that are offered during our annual
performance reviews often fail to keep up. They’re not bad — last year most
people got 2.5 to 3 percent — but it’s a very slow rise. In many cases, that
means workers who’ve been around for years either make less than newly
hired employees or are just cracking the salary that newcomers walk in with.

Management has worked on these issues for years, and there’s a continuing
campaign to bring up the pay of those editors deem substantially underpaid.
Still, it would undoubtedly help to raise the known bottom line for all workers,
not just newcomers or the grossly underpaid.

This is one area where a guild contract could help. Most contain minimum pay
scales that relate compensation to years of service. They don’t prevent one
from negotiating an “overscale” salary — minimum is the key word. It just
raises the floor for everyone. Click here for the survey.

WE NEED LEADERS: For many of us, talking union felt pretty scary at first.
But after a month of being pretty open about my role in all this, I can happily
report that I’ve suffered no ill effects. And I know my co-chairs Karl Fischer
and Michael Manekin can say the same thing. Nothing bad happens to those
who speak out in favor of the guild.

And if you’re ready to step up and go public yourself, you can really help out.
Lending your name to the effort shows our coworkers that it’s perfectly safe
to talk about, and ask questions about, what a union would mean to our
newsroom. Who you are matters too: as our coworkers start to see the truly
talented and hardworking journalists who are helping and supporting us, they
will understand this effort in a new way.

Here are a few simple things you can do right now:

* Wear a GO GUILD button in the office, every day. Jet me an e-mail, and I’ll
rush one into your hands. More and more of us are doing this. We hope that
you will too.

* Talk to your coworkers about what we’re doing and why. If they’re at all
interested in learning more, get a home e-mail so we can add them to our
email list. Direct them either to me or to Karl.

* Post a comment at the end of this newsletter. Sign your name. Or better yet,
write a testimonial for the website on why you believe organizing is the right
choice for our newsrooms. We’ll take your picture and add it to our ever-growing
gallery of personal voices. And yeah, some of ours are long, but yours doesn’t
have to be.

– Sara Steffens

COMING CLEAN ABOUT THE OUTSIDERS: OK, I have a confession to make.
Management has it half-right about outsiders coming in, trying to turn you all
into dues-paying guild members.

There are thousands of concerned fellow journalists involved in this conspiracy.

Among them: The Mercury News guild, which works with us because they worry
about their own future. They saw what happened when MediaNews folded the
ANG newsrooms in with the nonunion CCN — they decertified the ANG guild,
and all those workers lost the ability to negotiate with a collective voice.

Will the Merc be next? It could be. We’re owned by the same corporate parent.
We all work in the region. And managers can more easily meet cost-cutting
goals if employees lack the legal ability to protest.

Chronicle workers have similar concerns, but with a longer view. They know
that if the Merc contract vanishes, they alone will work for substantially better
pay and benefits than the rest of the region’s newspaper employees. That will
weaken their ability to hold on to what they have — if nobody else gets it,
why should they?

And the national guild definitely worries about what’s happening here. If key
newspaper contracts die in the liberal, expensive and sophisticated Bay Area,
what does that portend for newspaper pay and benefits nationwide?

You can see why they want to help. I don’t think they are “outsiders.” They’re
fellow journalists, working for the good of journalists everywhere, and at least
in this way our interests align with theirs.

If we don’t do something now, at our company, we’re not the only ones at risk.
All newspaper workers in the region stand to lose bargaining strength, and in
the process their ability to help determine fair compensation for their work.
That is why you see these “outsiders,” as management puts it, supporting us
as we work to organize BANG-EB. We need their help, and they need us.
Without us, it will be harder for them to cling to decent salaries and benefits.

We are a sapling on the precipice of a mudslide. We can fall as far as gravity
will take us, or we can catch and stick upon the roots of established neighbors.
How far we slide depends at least in part upon our actions now. So take the
salary survey. It’s a first step toward sticking someplace uphill.

– Karl Fischer

MARK YOUR CALENDARS, ONE BIG BASH: We’re throwing a party. A big one,
open to all newsroom employees in the BANG-East Bay, with special appearances
by a few of our former coworkers. No agenda, no strong-arming, just a chance to
meet your peers and have a drink or two. You don’t have to think any certain way
to come, and significant others are more than welcome. Mark your calendars for
Friday, March 7, and watch for an Evite in your inboxes this week.

DON’T FORGET: “THE FUTURE OF THE NEWSROOM“, 2/20

Don’t miss this timely discussion, subtitled “New opportunities, collateral damage,
and effects on journalists in the digital era.” It takes place from 6:30-8 p.m. this
Wednesday (Feb. 20) at UC Berkeley, at North Gate Hall, Room 105. It’s free.

Speakers include Salon.com managing editor Jeanne Carstensen, California Media
Project director Louis Freedberg, San Jose Mercury News guild rep Luther Jackson,
and Matt Mansfield, deputy managing editor at the Merc. Click here for more info.

Thanks,

Karl Fischer
Sara Steffens

Hope you’re doing well. We’ve been pretty busy the last couple weeks as the
guild organizing effort has picked up steam. And if last week’s scary letter
home summarizing the recent roadshows was any indication, management
has been pretty busy too (5 grafs of gloom and doom; 11 grafs about the
dangers of joining the guild).

So newsroom layoffs are getting discussed here as a possibility. I figured that
would happen sooner or later, and we should expect the gloom and doom to
continue and worsen as weeks pass. It really could happen — could always
have happened, at any time — but we have no real way of knowing what the
company plans to do at this point.

Our industry is growing increasingly inhospitable, and not even a strong guild
can do a thing to prevent layoffs driven by economic necessity and change.
Don’t look here for that kind of protection. The guild can only help around the
edges – by negotiating for contract language that influences the layoff process,
such as advance notice, severance pay, rehire benefits and seniority.

One argument against the guild that we sometimes hear is that it cannot
guarantee that everyone will keep their jobs. But what kind of an argument is
that? Is the company promising no layoffs if we reject the guild? Doesn’t sound
that way to me. Right now they do whatever they feel they need to do, without
our input. If they feel they need to lay off some employees for whatever reason,
they will do it. Their decisions change with their business needs.

But I don’t think we can assume an inverse relationship between worker
compensation and the number of workers. The Bay Area is an important market
for MediaNews. There are several MediaNews papers around the country that
have negotiated excellent contracts (see Denver and St. Paul). We know that
times are hard, but corporate is still profiting from our labor. The question is
whether MediaNews would, if forced, invest more here. I don’t think there’s
enough information on the table to know. But I also know we’ll never find out
if we don’t explore our options.

LUNCH WITH THE BOSS (by Sara Steffens):

So, Karl, Mary and I had lunch Monday with John Armstrong and Kevin Keane.
None of us walked in expecting to change each other’s minds.

We were hoping to share our core goal, one we hope everyone will support:
To organize our newsroom in the most respectful, least divisive way possible,
without insulting our colleagues, our newspaper or its managers. We want to
bring people together, not tear them apart.

John and Kevin doubt this is possible. They already feel stung, they said, to
hear that we think our papers are getting worse, that our newsroom staffing
is suffering, that our managers have limited power in the face of the profit
expectations and business model of the MediaNews corporation.

If we trust them, they asked, why do we need a union?

It’s an interesting question, and one that gets to the heart of why we are all
doing this.

In my years at the Times, I’ve always jumped in headfirst to things I believe
are good for the paper, good for the community, and good for journalism.

In my early days at the paper, I started a little committee to find ways to
keep reporters from leaving for dot-coms. Radical stuff like offering free
cleaning supplies for our desks. I founded the Times’ annual school-supply
drive, and soon found myself personally lugging mountains of backpacks to
and fro. I signed on to help a reporter run a brown-bag writers’ group, and
when that group died, I signed on to help with the next one. I chaired a
strategic planning subcommittee on youth readership. I helped plan Chris
Lopez’s company Christmas party, lugging booze through a very miserable
rainstorm while several months pregnant.

Never before have I been accused of stepping up because I didn’t trust the
company to do the right thing. Always, my managers have understood what
I do: Good ideas come from all of us. Work gets done by those willing to do it.

Here’s how I see it: John and Kevin probably want better for us than what
MediaNews has offered. But just as I have no power to negotiate a lower
co-pay for my prescriptions, they have no power to convince the company
that the new health plan is a mistake – one of many small aggravations that
will over time drive away the talent we need to survive these turbulent times.

We like our managers. We want to help them do what’s right for us, and for
journalism.

EATIN’ CROW (by Karl Fischer):

I made an error last week in a message I wrote to you, the one responding
to the roadshow “scary letter” that got mailed home.

Both John Armstrong and another particularly savvy co-worker pointed it out
to me Monday. Here is the suspect sentence:

“While a guild cannot prevent layoffs if it really comes to that, a guild does
have extensive legal rights to information — they have to open the books –
and we can know better whether it really needs to come to that.”

That bit in the middle about opening the books is inaccurate. Even with a guild,
the company does not need to open its books — at least not completely — to
the guild. It would only need to do so if it claimed that financial hardship were
the reason they were unable to meet the guild’s economic demands, and that
typically does not happen.

The point I was trying to make was that the company does legally have to
provide information needed for the guild to bargain effectively. For example,
if there’s a takeaway proposal on the table, the guild can ask for relevant
information relating to the issue. What is relevant and how much information
must be given are sometimes points of contention, but at least the guild has
rights to more information when bargaining than non-union employees do
when trying to cut their own deals individually.

In the near future I’ll send out some examples of the kinds of information
some local guilds have requested recently during contract talks, along with
more discussion about how the bargaining process works.

LUNCH REDUX II (by Sara):

Any of you frightened by the letters mailed to your homes last week may be
relieved by John’s clarification on Monday, supplied to us at lunch.

The paragraph on potential layoffs, he said, just happened to directly precede
the 11 following paragraphs on the “unfortunate” aspects of our organizing
effort. John assured us, on the record, that any determination of whether to
pursue layoffs will have nothing to do with whether the newsroom chooses to
organize.

In other words: what’s going to happen is going to happen. The question then
becomes: in these uncertain times, will we benefit from a legal structure that
represents our interests as employees and journalists?

Obviously, we think the answer is “yes.”

For the record, John also was offended by our characterization of the letter as
a scare tactic. He told us he didn’t mean to scare you, or your families.

ONE BIG BANG IS ONLINE:

Check out our retooled web site at onebigbang.org. We hope you’ll find the new
content more useful, particularly for those of us at the Contra Costa papers.

We plan to add photos, messages from your co-workers and news about the
organizing drive every week, all written by people you know. We’d like the
site to become a place for nuts-and-bolts answers and we think we’re off to a
pretty good start. Let us know what you think…

Keep an eye out for the anonymous salary survey, which we hope will go live
in about a week. I hope you will participate, because we in the newsroom have
never had a good grasp of relative compensation at the Contra Costa papers —
how much money people who do what you do should expect to earn. Informally,
we’re finding that salaries are all over the map.

JOIN US (by Karl):

If you’re feeling especially brave today, go see Sara Steffens (or me) for a
“Go Guild” button. Then wear it at work.

Nothing bad happens to people who do this. I know, I’ve worn one. It’s allowed,
and if management were to bug you about it, you would want to let us know
immediately.

If you’re feeling less brave but still want to help, you can always do something
small but important like forwarding this message along (on personal email
accounts) to your friends who don’t now get this update, or getting their email
addresses to pass along to me. Just a hair fewer than half of guild-eligible CCT
employees are on my list, in large part because you folks actually do this every
week. So thank you, lots. But we still need more help.

If you’re interested in talking, or if you have specific questions, call or write me
or Sara.

And if you’d like to see what we’re doing up close, we’re always happy to see
you at our 10 a.m. Saturday meetings at the Media Workers Hall, 1831 Park
Boulevard in Oakland.

ARTIE’S (by Karl):

I will be drinking at Artie’s, the bar over in the Countrywood Shopping Center
in Walnut Creek, for the next few Friday nights starting around 11 p.m. I’d like
to have a beer with anyone who’d like to come by, particularly desk and sports
people who want to know more about the guild but haven’t gotten a chance to
talk with organizers because of our differing shifts.

So come out, and tell your friends.

CAL J-SCHOOL, THE FUTURE OF THE NEWSROOM, 2/20:

Anyone with time should check out a discussion February 20 at UC Berkeley,
“The Future of the Newsroom: New opportunities, collateral damage, and effects
on journalists in the digital era.”

The event, presented by the journalism grad school, runs from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
at North Gate Hall, Room 105. It’s free. Here’s a description by the J-School:

“Everyone is talking about the future of the newsroom in this new digital world
where young people get their news from YouTube and Facebook, and traditional
print journalists have seen hundreds of their brethren laid off or bought out.
Join us for a discussion of how these changes are affecting journalists. What can
media workers unions do? Should journalists hurry up and learn how to blog and
podcast before its too late?”

Speakers include Salon.com managing editor Jeanne Carstensen, California Media
Project director Louis Freedberg, San Jose Mercury News guild rep Luther Jackson,
and Matt Mansfield, deputy managing editor at the Merc.

Thanks!

Karl Fischer
Sara Steffens

By Josh Richman:

MY BABY, SHE WROTE ME A LETTER:

By now many of you have received and read a letter from John Armstrong and
Kevin Keane explaining why it’s “unfortunate” that the “National Newspaper Guild”
is organizing our newsrooms. Ready, set… dissect! (more…)