Sick days and younger readers

Here is an interesting and conventionally well-executed business story on corporate sick time policies.

This is a "business" story, designed for that section of most newspapers that also includes the daily stock market reports.

The "business" section is, essentially, the "capital" section for most papers. Capital is quite important -- a vital component of "business." But it is not the only component nor, by far, the most populous. Yet newspapers offer no corresponding section providing regular coverage of labor.

And this is what is both typical and deeply strange about Michael J. Diamond's article on sick time policies. In Asbury Park, N.J., where this story was first published, there are far more employees than there are employers. (And since every employer is also an employee, this seems to hold true universally.) Yet this article -- like the majority of the content in newspapers' business sections -- is written almost exclusively for and from the perspective of employers.

This is odd. Why do newspapers insist on avoiding the concerns of the vast majority of their readers in order to focus on an audience that makes up only a fraction of their readership?

Imagine if this practice were followed in, say, the sports section.

The normal policy for sports sections is to focus on the concerns of sports fans. The fans, the people, are the intended audience and readership. This makes sense when you consider the demographics of the world of sports. Consider a typical baseball game: Only 20-30 players actually participate in the game, with a few dozen others in uniform as coaches and reserves. If you add to this all of the other sports professionals -- management, broadcasters, trainers, etc. -- you'll still end up with only a few hundred, at most, directly involved in the business of the game. In the stands, however, are thousands of fans (even in Montreal or Tampa Bay), with thousands more watching or listening from home.

It makes sense for the sports section of the newspaper to be written for this audience of thousands and not targeted to the narrow concerns of the few hundred athletes and professionals actively involved in the game itself.

This analogy breaks down, however, since employees are more than simply spectators on the sidelines of the world of business. They are active participants. They get up and go to work. They pay bills. To paraphrase Lloyd Dobler: they sell things, buy things and process things; they sell things bought and processed; they buy things sold and processed; they process things sold and bought.

Yet their world -- the world of work, of 9-to-5, of the workplace, of the paycheck that must somehow last to the end of the month -- is at best tangentially covered by most newspapers' business sections and business reporting.

"The priority of labor over capital" (to borrow a phrase from Abe Lincoln and Catholic social teaching) would make good business sense for any newspaper trying to reach and serve the largest possible readership.

Sick time policies are an important and interesting topic for nearly every employee. They'll be drawn to read an article with a headline like "Sick time often a balancing act."

But when they read it, they will find it's not written with them in mind. By reading between the lines, they will glean some useful information, but they'll finish this article with the enduring sense that it was written for someone else. Read enough articles that make you feel that way and eventually you'll get the message and stop reading the newspaper altogether.

This may, in fact, be exactly what has happened for many of those "younger readers" that newspapers are now so desperate to reach. How many 18-to-34-year-olds are employers? How many are "capital"? How many would find articles like Diamond's as more than vaguely peripheral to their concerns?

The new tabloids aimed at younger readers have an opportunity to address this glaring gap in conventional business journalism.

By covering the world of business for an audience of employees (i.e. workers, most people), they might actually succeed in attracting younger readers. If they do this right, they'll end up attracting a big chunk of "older" readers as well.

Comments

[Claude Muncey]

I wonder if the problem is not, in a way, a result of marketing. The business section of most papers is not aimed at connecting with a large number of readers, it is tasked with reliably delivering a specific market segment (in this case the same one as the WSJ) that the sales staff thinks they can sell consistently to certain advertisers. The biggest gains over the past decade or so for the 'business' pages have been the increase in the number of people investing in stocks and funds -- that brought more people to those pages, but may have lost them to the net.

Some of these issues make it into the general news sections -- but not with the kind of depth or focus that business writers provide for the specific audience of the business pages. Do we need better coverage of these issues overall, or do we need to transform the business pages, essentially rebrand and remarket them? Interesting question . . .

[Jon H]

Agreed.

Many of the articles about the loss of IT jobs consist primarily of quotes from companies who assist in the offshoring process, companies who provide offshore services, or market research companies who probably have a stake in hyping the benefits of moving work offshore. Some other quotes will be from economists, who speak from the ivory tower perspective, wherein jobs are interchangable and all that matters is the bottom line.

When these articles address how to deal with the problem, they usually quote economists saying that education is the answer, which seems to be largely concerned with future generations, not current workers. And it doesn't address the movement of jobs held by people who *are* educated. And it doesn't address the problem that by the time a worker obtains a credential in a new field, jobs in the new field may be on their way overseas, making it difficult or impossible to pay off the loans that were required to pay for the education. Which were probably taken on top of loans obtained to pay for education in the person's original field.

[Retrogrouch]

Slack, just how much advertising dollars would a newspaper pull in if they actively focused on the concerns of employees.

http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/docUploads/Logan%2DConsultants%2Epdf

Not much, because employers go to training sessions that specifically teach them how to maintain a docile, sibservient and unorganized labor force. Anything that might get employees thinking they have common interests with each other would be actively opposed.

[emjaybee]

Slack (is that what we should call you?), what an interesting piece. I had never given the matter much thought, I had just always assumed the business pages were aimed at higher-level businesspeople than myself.

I think we lower-level folks are supposed to be satisfied with the advice columns in the Help Wanted section (syndicated, lame, and condescending) and Dilbert. And maybe an occasional Lifestyle article about not spending too much time chatting at the water cooler if we want to impress the boss.

I've read many references to a study that said many US workers consistently overrate their wealth and try to identify with the wealthy 1%; maybe this is why there has been little demand for a more worker-centric press. No one wants to admit to being just a mere "worker". Everyone wants to think they are just a few years away from being CEO.

[john]

on a related note, I think the baby boomers by not retiring (because they can't) are making it hard for the younger generation to get jobs is gradually creating a generation gap of hatred, and the young are going to fuck over the old.

the young like my self are becoming disillusioned so we have taken up drinking and socializing with friends and working at underpaid jobs because we can not get anything better.

do you know what is like to be told to go to college so you can get a job, and then find out you need 5 to 7 years of experience. and then bust your ass for 6 to 10 monthes to find a job while you bust your ass at some restuarent (i.e. typically college job) to pay your rent.

young people on a whole don't care anymore, the paper appeals mostly to 35 and above. we don't vote because we know politicians don't help the us, they give us more tests and standarized crap, and try to appeal to our parents that they are spending boatloads of cash for our education, which we will reject anyway.

[Adam Kotsko]

Too much emphasis on the worker's perspective would be incredibly dangerous for society. It is important, from a marketting standpoint, that everyone have common interests -- but they must hold those common interests separately. Being reminded how many people like Britney Spears might give people conversation fodder, but being reminded how many people are being routinely screwed over by their employers might make them want to change things. Groups that find spontaneous solidarity in shared greivances are both unpredictable and dangerous, and are prevented from forming whenever possible.

It's not necessarily fair, but it does make sense on one level that that's how our ruling elites behave. Hopefully media that are organized from the bottom rather than the top (like blogs) will be able to provide the bottom-centric coverage that media elites will never have the incentive to provide.

[walden]

actually sports pages are written the same way. There is way more "news" about the owners, ownership moves, salaries, and what coaches are being interviewed than there is about WHY a particular offense or defense is working well, or what enabled a particular team or player to excel.

[Kevin Carson]

Retrogrouch,

Nice link.

It's interesting that most company handbooks have a policy expressly forbidding "employees" to discuss their wages and salaries with one another. The last thing they want is for their workers to start comparing notes.

Tom Lagana, who started that godawful, treacly "Chicken Soup for the Soul" phenomenon, is a consultant who tells employers how to make their workers docile: "Molotov Cocktail for Tom Lagana's Soul"
http://www.connect.ab.ca/~mctsoul/lagana.htm

I should also point out that most of the commenters on this thread are committing the worst of all imaginable sins: class warfare. The only ideologically correct attitude is a belief in the harmony of interests of labor and capital (we're all Americans, you know).

I wonder if we're supposed to apply this philosophy to the rest of our lives, outside the world of work. Maybe when we're mugged, we shouldn't have hard feelings against the mugger. After all, if he's a fellow lodge brother in the "American club," all those fine folks who just happen to have been born between the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel, it would be "divisive" to draw attention to that gun in your belly.

As far as I can see, a large corporation that makes its profits off the government tit is a bigger robber than the guy who holds me up at gunpoint. Making profits, rent, and usury from government intervention in the market is robbery, pure and simple. And there's not a one of the Fortune 500, in my opinion, that would be running in the black a year from now if the government were forced to cease all subsidizing big business and protecting it against competition.

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass whether the guy holding me up is from America or Timbuktoo. Anyone who uses force to live off my labor is my enemy. Anyone who works for an honest living is my friend. Why waste time hating a manufactured "enemy" like Saddam when you face a REAL enemy every time you go to work?

[Ab_Normal]

Kevin: I work for a acompany that states in the employee handbook that telling another co-worker what you make is a firing offense. I just got a stock option grant and was told to keep the amount to myself. Feh, I say. I tell all to my office-mate; he has a right to know (though he's given me the flu, the meanie).

On the topic of sick-leave: one of the companies profiled in the linked article gives their employees 3 whole days of sick leave. Another granted 5 days -- after fifteen years on the job. Holy bleep! What happens if you come down with the death flu that's going around? I've seen people down for *weeks* with that one.

Another thing I've seen is companies which have a PTO plan, but then don't allow employees to take it -- I left one employer after 18 months, and had accumulated 120 hours of PTO they had to pay me for, because I was never allowed to take vacation. My current employer caps PTO accumulation at 40 hours per year, and I just lost 8 hours at the end of the year. (I'm doing better than one team mate, who lost in excess of a week of PTO.)