First he incensed NUJ members by calling their leader Jeremy Dear a "fucking loon" for suggesting sit-ins might be the answer to the crisis in the regional press.Now Press Gazette columnist Grey Cardigan has posted on his blog advising "Trots" how to takeover newspapers closed down by the corporate suits.
Grey writes: "OK you Trots, so here’s what you should be doing instead of whining around the braziers or plotting a pointless sit-in.
"Whenever a well-established, financially-viable newspaper is closed down by the panicking corporate suits – and Long Eaton springs to mind - you need to get in there with a sensible business plan based on sensible costs and a sensible margin.
"Rally the local businesses; seek out local investors with a few bob to spend (every town has them, even in these difficult times); lean on the local council and the regional quangos; put together a local management team backed up by national expertise (you do still know how to do journalism, don’t you?).
"The NUJ should create a template for a sensible and viable newspaper business that could be applied wherever the need or opportunity arises. We should be snatching these ‘doomed’ titles back from the greedy bastards who don’t understand or care about our craft and its importance to the community. Fuck them – if they don’t want them, we’ll have them."
Mind you, Grey can't resist a final stab with his ice pick , stating "Of course, if that’s too challenging, you could always just write another condolence note to Colonel Gaddafi…"
Historical note: An emergency motion was passed at the 1986 NUJ ADM stating that the union should send a “telegram of condolence “ to Gaddafi the day after Libya was bombed by US planes based in Britain. The story went out on PA and caused a storm in the national press and within the union. It led to 96 NUJ members resigning – including Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie. Not sure if a telegram was ever sent but the damage was done.
Indeed so. Some of us have been advocating such an approach for years, and coming up against the oppositionist nonsense that it "isn't the union's job" to bail out the owners. There's much to be said for the approach Grey advocates, although questions still to be answered about questions of ultimate ownership - dare I say control of the means of production? - that Grey would presumably scoff at.
ReplyDeleteMind you, it's always useful to put ideas forward in a constructive way, rather than resort to the pantomine villain act, but I guess an experienced journalist – as grey likes us to remember he is – knows that a bit of cheap sensationalism pulls in more readers.