Do you not understand the difference in duties between a blog proprietor and the manager of a for-profit corporation?

And call me crazy, but I want my business journalists to understand that idea and be familiar and comfortable with its logical implications. Wait, “want”? I demand it. Anyone who invests in a corporation in any way, shape or form ought to feel the same way.

Reprimand Richard Richtmyer? Screw that. AP needs to not only un-reprimand the guy but also put him in charge of business-news coverage.

Where do you classify internet blogs that don’t bring in enough revenue so they turn to fundraising? Should their owners be held responsible?

Shoulda let it lie, AP. Stupid to draw attention to it where your many, many friends in the blogosphere could chew over it and mock you.

Richard Richtmyer, a Philadelphia-based newsman, set off Tuesday’s tempest with a seemingly harmless comment posted to his Facebook profile late last month criticizing the executive management of newspaper publisher McClatchy, whose stock plummeted following a 2006 acquisition of San Jose-based Knight Ridder.

“It seems like the ones who orchestrated the whole mess should be losing their jobs or getting pushed into smaller quarters,” Richtmyer wrote on May 28. “But they aren’t.”

He’s right, Gary Pruitt should lose his job or at least take a drastic pay cut

From a few months ago

In all, 128 jobs–or 11 percent of the Bee workforce–were eliminated on Monday. That’s part of 1,600 jobs that the Bee’s parent company, The McClatchy Co., is cutting across the country. McClatchy is losing 15 percent of its workforce this go-round.

The layoffs include veteran reporters that you have been reading for years. Many more of the downsized worked behind the scenes as editors, assistants and in important positions producing and distributing the paper every day.

128 people lose their job because of his short-sighted decisions

And what’s his sacrifice?

Last year, Pruitt made $1.1 million in base salary, and more than $4 million when his bonuses were figured in. But Pruitt declined the union’s suggestion. Instead, he’ll be taking a 15 percent cut to his salary and forgoing any bonuses for 2008 and 2009. McClatchy’s other top executives are also giving up bonuses and taking 10 percent pay cuts.

All in all, Bites figures Pruitt will have to ride out this dark year with just $1 million for his troubles.

More here

http://www.newsreview.com/sacr…..=+GO+#1145

What the Baron (Senior Management) says is the truth. Disagreement is met with death (firing).

What we need is some democracy in such institutions. Why is it democracy is seen as a fine way to govern a country, but a communist plot when applied to other institutions?

The employees have as much, if not more, invested in their workplace than a shareholder. The shareholder can sell their shares — it’s not as easy to get another job.

Under a so-called “say-on-pay” proposal, shareholders would be given the right to vote each year on whether an executive compensation package should be approved. While the results would be non-binding, ….

So who appoints the compensation committee? And if the results are non-binding, all you have is a toothless pit-bull. Sorry, but I don’t see this as very much ‘oversight’. A nice opinion poll, maybe.

The end of the article cites Obama’s plan (in February) to put a $500K salary cap on banks that have sucked up more than obscene assistance, and goes on to say:

Later that month, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn) authored legislation that trumped those efforts and limited bonuses to a third of executives’ salaries.

Dodd’s maneuver upset some Obama officials because the combined force of his amendment and the administration’s earlier guidance curbed pay more than the White House intended. The officials began to worry that firms would drop out of government rescue programs or lose their most talented employees.

(my bold)

Maybe it would be beneficial to these companies (and the rest of us taxpayers) if they, indeed, lost what they consider their ‘most talented employees’. It was the policies of these ‘great talents’, after all, that led these companies to the financial situation they now are in.

Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to require that all executives take a pay hit before any of the worker bees get laid off or have their salaries and/or benefits cut? Now that, would be change I could believe in.

Take the incredibly stupid decision by the NYT Co. to buy the Boston Globe. That was bad enough, but did they have to invest in 17% of the Boston Red Sox? The sad thing is that their share of the Sox is probably one of the few things NYT Co owns that is not a piece of shit. The problem is that everyone knows the NYT CO needs cash —badly and quickly — so they will never get anywhere near the full value of their shares of the Sox which are probably worth between $150 to $200 million.

This was a huge lost opportunity for the Times. They should have sold their Sox shares in late 2007 or early 2008 AFTER Boston won the 2007 World Series. Instead, the Times held on to the shares for too long and once all their problems with the Globe, reported with much delight by the RW Boston Herald, are national news.