I’ve received the following tip:
A little bird told me the Newspaper Guild at the Journal Star will run a full-page ad on New Year’s Day. It will kick off an aggressive save-the newspaper campaign that will feature a new web site, www.savethejournalstar.com. People — anyone and everyone — will be encouraged to log on and register their support, asking current owner David Copley and the Journal Star’s interim publisher, Ken Mauser, to ensure that the paper is sold to a responsible buyer. The union, which represents editorial and circulation employees, also has plans for a news conference outside City Hall and a community forum in the next couple months.
The link might still be under construction.
UPDATE: The site is up and running, although some links are not.
I’ve gotta be thinking that by “responsible buyer” they’ve gotta mean someone other than David Ransburg. The reporters of the Journal Star have a commitment to the truth, and that’s a standard Ransburg has a bit of trouble meeting.
While I’d love to see the JS owned locally, a chain with a good reputation would better than Ransburg.
NOTE: I’m keeping this post at the top of the page for the rest of the day. More recent posts follow.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
Didn’t Henry Slane sell the paper to the ESOP, so that it was owned by the employees, who then had to sell to Copley, to collect their cash.
It just smacks me as a tad hypocritical that the last generation of so called independent journalists are the same ones that cashed out, leaving the paper in the state that it is in.
Most of those employees are gone
Because of the way the ESOP was set up by Henry Slane and his lawyers and accountants, there really wasn’t much choice but to sell in 1996. People who were in management in 1984 when the ESOP started got huge stakes in the company. Too many people retired too young, threatening to bring the whole thing down.
Don’t get me wrong — it worked out well for everyone who participated.
BTW, the ESOP trustees, who were appointed by management, attempted to sell the paper without letting employee-shareholders vote. The Guild and Mailers unions’ attorneys wrote a letter to the publisher, threatening litigation on behalf of all owners. The trustees quickly backed down and allowed all owners to vote based on their share of ownership.
This was the only time in the 12 years of the ESOP that non-management employees got any say in how the paper was run.
Helen Copley also insisted that all five unions OK the sale. They all did.
The upcoming sale will be far different. Employees own nothing. And this is an asset sale, not a stock sale as in 1996. So all the contracts with unions, suppliers, whatever, could be null and void.
Rebel Yell is right: Most of the people who worked at the paper in 1996 are probably gone.
And is there ANYONE in Peoria naive enough to think that David Ransburg would never stoop to union busting?
Anyone?
*cue the sound of crickets chirping*
I think we all discovered what a scam ESOP’s are.
Nationally, you think “Enron.”
Locally, I know a lot of people who think “Foster & Gallagher.”
Excellent review of history by Another JS’r.
Why don’t the middle managers that made out so well, come back and help buy up so that they can “preserve the integrity of the press” ?
Regarding Mouse’s comment, I don’t think you can say all ESOPs are scams.
I know about the Journal Star’s from experience and about Foster & Gallagher’s from what I have read.
While it’s true that rank-and-file employees had almost no say in running the Journal Star during the ESOP, most employees who put some of their own money into it did very well when the paper was sold. It was a big bet on a single company. In this case, the bet paid off handsomely.
Some retirees refer to the late Henry Slane as “Saint Henry” for starting the ESOP. Admittedly, most who use this title were managers.
If the JS ESOP still existed, I think it would not be doing so well because of the general decline of the industry. Since the stock was not publicly traded, the value of the company was determined each year by an independent appraiser, John Morton. The ultimate value, of course, was determined by what Copley paid in 1996.
It was widely rumored that Gannett was the second-highest bidder for the paper in ‘96. If you took a poll in the newsroom asking if you’d rather work for Copley or Gannett, the vast majority would say Copley.
Someone should write a book comparing the ESOPs at Foster & Gallagher and the Journal Star. “A Tale of Two ESOPs” might be a good title.
Change in the PJS will most likely turn out to be a good thing. A new editorial board without the “we are better than you” attitude would be a great start. They are bunch of typical ultra-left wingers.
Read the 1st paragraph in today’s paper about Sadaam’s execution:
http://www.pjstar.com/stories/123006/NAT_BBV1MU1N.047.shtml
Always trying to put a slant on everything.
“I think we all discovered what a scam ESOP’s are.”
Pfft. At the company my dad was at, they had all these high-school diploma factory-floor millionaires through the ESOP. (Non-unionized, I suppose I should add, but it was in the Chicago burbs which is a less “union” area than Peoria and in advanced telecom which isn’t a traditionally unionized industry.) Factory linemen made more than my dad did as head of the legal department because they’d been there 20 years through the growth of the company and the stock price and continually got shares throught the ESOP and were making mega-dividends.
(The company is now under new and utterly moronic management and I still have 250 shares they’re absolutely drubbing on the NASDAQ.)
A lot of it is about transparency and integrity of the companies. I’m the first to NOT believe in the integrity of corporate America, but there are companies out there who aren’t actively seeking to screw either their employees or consumers.
Here is how F&G screwed their employees (I am not one of them that got screwed).
They created the ESOP, with the ESOP taking a=out a huge loan to buy privately held shares.
Board Members sell some of their shares to the ESOP – thus creating revenue for themselves.
The company thrived and the ESOP value soared.
The ESOP paid off the loan in record time.
The ESOP decided to buy even MORE shares form the Board members, but this time the price was much higher.
Old Man Foster dies.
Board Members sell some more of their shares to the ESOP – thus creating MORE revenue for themselves.
Board Members start making boneheaded moves with the company.
The employees are supposed to be protected by the ESOP, but it turns out that some of the folks running the ESOP are ON THE BOARD.
F&G value starts to sink.
F&G goes belly up.
Emloyees lose retirement fund – including people already retired.
Employees lose job, including Board members.
ESOP = $0
Board Members still have lots of $$$$$
I worked at F&G for approx. two years and was only partially vested in the ESOP when I left. Nevertheless, I remembered when they said the loan would be paid off and when we could cash in our shares. When I called, they told me the loan wouldn’t be paid off for twice the number of years they told us originally. I did eventually get about $1,000 out of them before they went belly-up. Better than a sharp stick in the eye, I guess. I felt bad for the people who had worked there for decades and had nothing to show for it.
To MDD: I’m not a JS employee, but I do work in the newspaper industry. The editorial board doesn’t alter stories by The Associated Press.
It was the AP reporter who probably was trying to dress up a lede on a story the whole world knew by the time the papers hit front porches. And I’m sure it ran the same way in other publications because it was a national wire story.
As for the PJS, I wish the employees the best and hope the change doesn’t harm the paper’s excellent quality.