Should the President of the United States have a Swiss bank account?

Sounds about right to me.

 

Because baseball players aren't determining what baseball players are worth.

 

Yes. There were jobs for almost everyone back in the industrial revolution. Good times.

 

This is one of the dumbest things anyone has ever posted here.

 

Why?

The relative contribution of a CEO to the success of any company would have been the same in 1965 as it was in 2000 as it is today.

And yet CEO compensation has soared.

 

I'm not saying the jobs were great back then. I'm saying that our time is just as revolutionary.

And, with such revolutionary times will come great wealth -- for some.

 

And great social unrest.

 

Now! bring us some figgy pudding
Now! bring us some figgy pudding
Now! bring us some figgy pudding
and bring some out here.

 

He managed some TV stations, and led Gannett's broadcast division. Maybe he did his job well, maybe he didn't. The bio doesn't say.

What I would have done differently? I would have taken a chunk of the hundreds of millions in profit (at one time over a billion) per year and invested it in trying to find ways to make money on the web. I would have hired the best and brightest, guys and gals who innovate for computer companies, to come up with ways to transform into a media company instead of a newspaper company. Maybe it would have worked, maybe it wouldn't have. But at least we'd be trying.

I would NOT have totally decimated my papers, since they are still the main cash cow, while this transformation is occurring (call it a soft landing, if you wish). If I had to lay off employees, I would have done it by attrition, if possible. And I sure as heck wouldn't have made my employees take furloughs, only to take the savings and pay myself and my fellow members of the board with bonuses. Employee morale does contribute to companies' success.

If anything, I would have kept the employees and built up solid web presences with unique content that would make people want to come to the web site. I would charge for the web site (which Gannett, and other papers resisted for years) and which I and my fellow employees suggested to our paper, around, maybe 2004.

I would not waste my employees' time with stupid ideas about journalism that no other company does and that wouldn't sell one additional paper or generate one extra page view, nor would I devote energy to coming up with a new nickname for the newsroom nor worry about counting how many minorities are quoted each day. I want news. Hard news and features. From employees who aren't juggling writing two stories a day with shooting video, writing blogs, taking pictures, doing five web updates and Tweeting 10 times. The web stuff would be devoted to people working the web.

That about sum it up for ya?

 

Added value? The stock price went from $70+ a share to around $15 a share during Dubow's reign. How is that adding value?

And as I pointed out earlier, for several months around 2008-09 (I think it was six, but I could be wrong), Dubow sat at home on disability. The company continued to run without him.

Not to mention, I don't see why he should have been rewarded for "staving off the demise". That's his job. You don't get rewarded for doing your job. Should Capt. Smith, had he stayed alive, be rewarded for keeping the Titanic afloat for two hours so 700 people were saved or should he have been castigated for running the ship into an ice field at full speed to the point where the ship sinks and 1,500 people died?

 

Captain Chesley `Sully' Sullenberger? Should he be rewarded for landing his aircraft? It landed in the fucking Hudson River for God's sake! That wasn't it's planned final destination! [/Baron]