Union talks tough with Dow Jones management

E.S. “Jim” Browning has been a Wall Street Journal reporter for more than 27 years, in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris and New York. He currently write about financial markets and investing for the Journal.

But for the hundreds of business journalists who work at the Journal or Dow Jones properties such as MarketWatch, Barron’s and Dow Jones Newswires, Browning has a more important job. He is chairman of the bargaining committee in the current contract negotiations between Dow Jones and the Independent Association of Publishers Employees, the union that represents the journalists and other workers.

Earlier this week, the two sides held a bargaining session that focused mainly on health care. Browning talked to Talking Biz News about how the business journalism at Dow Jones might be affected by the talks.

What follows is an edited transcript.

What are the union’s specific concerns about the decreasing quality of the journalism practiced at Dow Jones related to the new contract?

We believe Dow Jones has gone too far in cutting costs. It has made too many cuts in staff and benefits, and it isn’t finished. It has demoralized employees by steadily cutting their real, inflation-adjusted pay starting in 2003. A number of senior, accomplished journalists have left the paper in recent months. At a time when the paper is trying to expand the scope of its coverage, an idea everyone applauds, the journalists who remain are stretched too thin.

At one time, rising health costs at Dow Jones were a legitimate concern. But starting in 2003, the company sharply increased employees’ share of health costs. Since then, health spending by the company has actually fallen as a percentage of its revenues.

Despite that, the company now wants to increase our health premiums by a stunning 400 percent and limit our wage increases to 2 percent annually, below the pace of inflation. That means our take-home pay would continue to fall.

Some would respond that all of this is par for the course in journalism today. Reporters are taking hits everywhere. But the Journal prides itself on offering a level of quality and accuracy that other papers can’t afford. Polls show that our readers expect that of us. They trust us in ways that they don’t trust other newspapers. We all take enormous pride in that. More important, the newspaper’s future depends on maintaining that standard. The more the company seeks to knock down our wages, push up our health costs and squeeze our staffing levels, the harder it will be to produce that level of quality.

There is an additional issue. Dow Jones’s new management — now for the first time — is dominated by people who have never worked as journalists. They have become enamored of outsourcing, and are outsourcing more and more back-office finance and technology-support jobs. They have even begun buying and publishing news analysis produced by outsiders, including a column of commentary in our core area, Wall Street coverage. Outsiders are cheaper, but don’t offer the same level of quality as staff employees. By shipping these jobs outside the company, we hire and train fewer of the young people who one day will be the senior journalists and other employees we rely on for future quality. We lose institutional memory.

We have raised this issue in contract negotiations, seeking to restrict future outsourcing, but the company so far has rejected any limits or controls on outsourcing.

How much of a concern in the negotiations is who will be the replacement for Paul Steiger?

We are concerned that a growing number of people outside the news department today are seeking to influence news decisions. We believe it is essential that the news department remain independent of the ad department, the business department and the editorial page, all of which have shown signs of meddling in the news department lately. It is unprecedented here to see these attacks on news-department independence, and it is certainly damaging to the newspaper. We very much hope that Paul’s replacement will have his judgment and, above all, his independence from outside pressures. This isn’t covered by the contract and we can’t address it in our negotiations, but this issue is an essential one and it contributes to the concerns that people in the newsroom have about quality.

When will union members go back on CNBC? Is that something that has been discussed during the talks?

CNBC appearances, as well as appearances on other company video and podcast projects, are voluntary. Company lawyers have alleged that we don’t have the right to ORGANIZE any refusal to participate as long as the contract is in force. We don’t agree, but to avoid a messy legal dispute, we aren’t asking people today to stay off CNBC or other video or podcast projects.

If we don’t see progress in contract bargaining, this is something that we would be able to pick up after the contract expires. In the meantime, people are asking to be paid extra for working on weekends and days off, work for which many people, especially reporters, don’t typically ask to be paid. In the past, these requests for extra pay have been viewed by management as a strong message from staff.

What do you think about the company’s decision to focus breaking news coverage at Dow Jones Newswires and leave the Journal reports for more analytical stories?

The company has publicized this move, but it isn’t really new. We have been using newswires reports for a lot of daily news coverage for some time. It is all part of the staff squeeze. You will note that the paper no longer identifies people as “staff reporters” beneath their bylines. That permits the paper to avoid indicating which stories are staff-written and which are from the newswires.

Major breaking news stories still are being covered by staff reporters. On the margin, a few more stories may shift away from staffers. At the same time, staffers are being asked to contribute more to reports that appear on the newswires and the website, which is where we are breaking more and more exclusive news.

Staffers always have been asked to focus mainly on analytical stories. This may be another case where people aren’t really freed up much from breaking-news duties, but still are asked to produce more in other areas. All part of the staff squeeze.

That said, the company doesn’t seem to be finished with its news-department consolidation. They are likely to cut news staff at the Journal, the newswires, MarketWatch and/or WSJ.com as they consolidate further. As I said earlier, we see those kinds of cutbacks as a continuing threat to quality. To pick up on a point A.J. Liebling liked to make years ago, when you cut back on the number of journalists out there chasing stories, you end up with cookie-cutter news and you destroy quality.

Has the issue of extra pay for blogging or appearances on WSJ.com video been discussed?

No. It could still come up. Right now these are voluntary activities that people do if they have the inclination and the extra time.

Is it a concern that journalists are being asked to be more versatile and produce for multiple media for the same pay?

It could become a concern. Right now, this is in its infancy. Reporters aren’t spending much time doing work for other media. The main extra work right now comes when we are asked to break news on the wires or the website, then redo the story for overseas editions and then file for the U.S. print edition. If we are asked to produce other media at the same time, it could become an issue.

How much does it play into the negotiations that this is the first time the company has been run by someone who wasn’t a journalist?

It has not yet affected the negotiations directly, but negotiations have been going on for only a few weeks. As I noted earlier, we are seeing signs that management has less respect than it once did for newsroom independence. That is a major concern.

Does it help that publisher Gordon Crovitz was once a reporter?

I believe that he was primarily a writer for the edit page and then joined the business side. We certainly hope that he is more sensitive to journalistic concerns than a non-journalist would be. It would be nice if he would stand up for newsroom independence, which he hasn’t yet done.

How much of a surprise was the fact that the Journal was closing its Canada bureaus? Do you think there will be more closings or consolidation of news staff?

The closing of the Canada bureaus was a complete suprise. There was no warning. There were indications that it was a last-minute business decision, driven by cost considerations, not news considerations. That’s an example of outside meddling in the news department.

We have seen news reports that the company has hired an outside consultant to study news operations. There is a difference between reorganizing and cutting. As I mentioned earlier, we worry that Dow Jones may be considering further cutbacks, which would certainly be a mistake.

What role do you see the WSJ and its journalism staff playing in the future of business journalism?

The Wall Street Journal is the gold standard for business journalism. It is essential that stay that way. It is essential for the success of Dow Jones and it is essential to us, the journalists. Most important, we have an obligation to the public to maintain our journalistic quality. We need to work together with management to ensure that the Journal starts reinforcing quality, instead of continuing with the cuts.

Maintaining the Journal’s standards costs a lot more money than it would cost to let quality slip. In this day of Internet news and instant decisions, there is nothing magic about the Journal’s name that will make people buy it and read it. Our future depends on the quality of the news we produce.