Time to Blog! Newsweek and Time as Electronic Sweatshops
When MSG Communications media-trains executives, a key point we make is that just like their own industries, journalism, media and publishing is all about doing more with less. If a newspaper had three reporters covering consumer electronics and gaming, for example, now there might be just one.
On a media tour with a client to Newsweek, we were having an engaged discussion with a key editor. Suddenly, someone burst in. “Time to blog!” they sang out brightly. The editor’s look of incredulity, scorn and resignation was priceless.
The same pressure exists at Time. Time Editor Rick Stengel wrote in a recent memo to staff:
Let me make this explicit: evaluations of every Time writer, correspondent, and reporter will be based on the quality and quantity of the contributions each of you makes to both the magazine and to TIME.com. TIME.com is a daily responsibility; Time magazine is a weekly responsibility.
We are now both a 24/7 news organization online and the indispensable weekly magazine that we have always been, and always will be. We don’t own our readers or their time - we have to earn their attention and loyalty every week, every day and every hour in a media landscape that is only getting more competitive. Let’s go to work.
Like the editor at Newsweek, the Time staff doesn’t get paid extra for their new 24/7 workload. If they’re lucky, they get to keep their jobs as long as there’s a Time in print–which Chairman Ann Moore claims will be as long as we live.