Because it's an editorial, written by the editorial board. None of the other editorials in that paper list an author either.
Because it's an editorial, written by the editorial board. None of the other editorials in that paper list an author either.
It goes a little further than that, per following. But interest in those responsible for the MJS attack on Americans needs to extend to the ownership as well; they're the ones who direct the editorial voice.
Once, it was not that way, but the MJS is not the only American institution that's suffered from the rot and decline of the past few decades. Time for a housecleaning; we have rats among the foundation.
Steven J. Smith -
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
Journal CommunicationsDouglas G. Kiel -
President, Journal Communications
Vice Chairman and CEO, Journal Broadcast Group Inc.David J. Drury -
President & Chief Executive Officer, Poblocki and Sons LLC
James L. Forbes -
Chairman, Badger Meter, Inc.
Cynthia L. Gault -
Account Executive, WTMJ-TVRoger D. Peirce -
Retired CEO, Super Steel Products CorporationDavid D. Reszel -
< Advertising Special Sections Manager, Journal Sentinel Inc.Mary Ellen Stanek -
Managing Director & Chief Investment Officer,
Baird Advisors, Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc
Taking Liberties - by Joel McNallyThe End of a Noble Experiment Profit has become priority at Journal Communications
It was a noble experiment. It produced what was once one of the top 10 newspapers in the country right here in Milwaukee. And now, apparently, it's over.
Journal Communications will publicly sell $250 million in stock on the open market. It is the end of a unique experiment in American business established by publisher Harry J. Grant in 1937 that allowed ordinary employees down to and including the cleaning staff to own the company for which they worked.
Ending the employee stock trust also signals the beginning of the end for local ownership of Wisconsin's largest newspaper and media company.
The public probably doesn't realize yet how much it stands to lose or even how much it already has lost. But while it lasted, employee ownership helped make The Milwaukee Journal one of the best newspapers in the United States.
That's not just an idle boast. For years, Time Magazine routinely included The Milwaukee Journal on its list of the top 10 newspapers in the country. Top 10 lists compiled by professionals within the newspaper industry did the same.
To give an indication of how far the mighty have fallen, a couple of years after merger created the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Columbia Journalism Review compiled a roundup of America's best newspapers. It included 115 daily newspapers. The Journal Sentinel was not one of the top 115.
What went wrong at the Journal Sentinel is a case study of what has gone wrong in American business. Visionaries who care about anything other than short-term profits are no longer welcome.
Grant's original vision of employee ownership was based on the idea that employees who owned a piece of the rock would be more committed to the long-term success of the company and producing a high quality product.
The excellence of The Milwaukee Journal was a perfect example. A newspaper in Milwaukee, vaguely located somewhere in the Midwest, attracted and retained top reporting talent.
Harry Pease, a science reporter who produced some of the best writing in the country on the U.S. space program, once turned down a job offer from The New York Times for financial reasons. The nation's leading newspaper couldn't match the equity he'd built up in Journal stock.
Many other top reporters came and stayed in Milwaukee, enabling The Milwaukee Journal to win five Pulitzer Prizes.
Merger Marked the End of an Era
The merger of The Journal and the Sentinel in 1995 really was an announcement that the philosophy of retaining the most accomplished journalistic talent for the newspaper had ended. Those who were fired or pushed into retirement in that merger included many of the most experienced, award-winning reporters. Management opted to keep journalists who were younger and cheaper.
(Truth in labeling: I was one of the experienced, national award-winning columnists they opted not to keep.)
The newspaper industry was going through the same transformation as other businesses in America. No one wanted people to work their entire lives at one company any more. If people did that, the company would have to pay them higher salaries and provide them with more benefits.
The new business model was to hire cheap, retain people for a few years and then show them the door. Rewarding experienced employees for producing the highest quality product was a quaint, old-fashioned and totally outmoded notion. A lesser product produced at lower cost could produce higher profits.
The newspaper got rid of exactly the employees Grant's stock plan was intended to retain. Short-term employees, who did not see their futures tied to the company, had much less interest in even acquiring stock. At the time the company decided to sell stock publicly, 10% of the stock had accumulated in its treasury unsold.
One reason the company believes its stock will be attractive on the open market right now is that communications companies are expecting a windfall over the next few years. That's because the Republican majority on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to vote in June to remove restrictions on one company buying up large numbers of radio and television stations in a single market.
Journal executives may be right that such a move would allow them to make out like bandits. But it is terrible public policy to encourage a few large companies to further concentrate their control over the media.
Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold already has a bill in Congress to try to undo some of the wreckage of the radio industry caused by the FCC deregulation allowing Clear Channel to grab up more than 1,200 stations across the country and turn them into automated musical pablum and political jingoism.
Harry Grant made lots of money by creating a great newspaper with an employee ownership plan that rewarded workers and served the public interest. His modern-day successors cleverly plot how to make even more money by ending employee ownership, reducing quality and totally ignoring the public interest.