Fantasy JOA, Round Two

By Joel Thurtell

Guess I was ahead of my time.

I could have won myself ten thousand big ones if I’d just been a little patient.

But now, I had to shoot off my big mouth.

Actually, I’m glad I was a bit soon off the mark with this one.

The Detroit Media Partnership, aka the monopoly that owns and runs the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, is offering ten grand in prizes to people — including their employees — who suggest ideas that improve the papers.

That would seem to take in former employees, as well. Of those, I am one, having worked as a reporter at the Free Press from 1984 until 2007, with a little vacation between 1996-97 when I was on strike.

As I was heading for the door of the Free Press back in November 2007, I happened to attend a little cake-cutting ceremony given for roughly three dozen of us older Freepsters who’d accepted a buyout. I’d started this blog, joelontheroad.com, a couple weeks earlier, and I quipped to Free Press Editor Paul Anger that he might want to consider a Joint Operating Agreement between the Free Press and JOTR.

He joked that the company’d need to hire better lawyers this time.

Guess that means Gannett honchos think they got stiffed somehow in the real JOA between Knight-Ridder (now defunct) and Gannett than joined the two papers.

A friend warned me that I’m lucky I didn’t do that deal with Gannett.

Metro Times pundit Jack Lessenberry outlined in “Gannett’s Goofs,” a pretty thorough set of reasons why these two papers are on the ropes. When I reminded him of my JOA proposal, he e-mailed, “You damn well better be relieved. You’d be on the spike for half their losses since then!”

Good point. There was a flaw in my deal. I was offering to merge JOTR with the Detroit papers. I demanded to name four of the five directors. I would be a member, as would Ed Wendover and John Kelly, both of whom waged a noble but losing court battle to stop the JOA. I also planned to name Lou Mleczko, administrative officer of The Newspaper Guild in Detroit, to my board.

My mistake was in leaving one board member under Gannett’s control.

It’s evident that any company that has to hold a contest to seek ideas for its survival is managed by just the kind of people who should not be in charge of any business.

I was going to call them “utter incompetents,” but I’m trying to be nice. I sort of feel sorry for them.

Three years after I made my offer, to which there was no response, the papers are in such bad condition that in a JOA negotiation this time, I’d be within my rights to name all five members of the board. I’d name Jack Lessenberry as the fifth member of the board.

But I don’t think I’d have lost my shirt in my original arrangement, either.

If I’d had control of the Detroit papers three years ago, here’s what I would have done: Fired all managers.

Everyone from publisher down to the lowliest assistant metro editor would have been sacked.

This would have taught all of them the value of a union contract and a solid set of procedures and due process in firing, which managers at the Detroit papers don’t have, thanks to their lack of a union.

I would have offered very generous buyouts to all Guild members over the age of 22.

I’m not calling the deadwood. But they have too many bad habits.

These papers are sick institutions. One way to invoke change would be to erase institutional memory, which carries with it an indelible record of learned behaviors such as sucking up to management and sucking up to sources.

Next, I’d hire bloggers and stringers.

Unlike so many blog news outlets, I’d PAY the new staffers. Union scale.

Michigan’s Morning Tradition would start with a clean slate.

Oh yes, another idea worth a bundle: Deliver the Free Press seven and the News six days a week.

Daily newspapers — What a radical idea!

Wonder if I’ll win that ten grand?