Why We Need Unions

The following is excerpted from a Blomberg.com story

By Mark Clothier

March 28 (Bloomberg) -- Circuit City Stores Inc., the second-largest U.S. electronics retailer after Best Buy Co., fired 3,400 of its highest-paid hourly workers and will hire replacements willing to work for less.

The company said its eliminating jobs that paid ``well above'' market rates. Those who were fired can apply for the lower pay, company spokesman Bill Cimino said today. He declined to give the wages of the fired workers or the new hires.

The job cuts are ``one of the most brazen examples of corporate America run amuck,'' said Greg Tarpinian, executive director of Change to Win, which represents seven unions and about 6 million workers. ``It's workers as disposable commodities, put in and put out based on whatever happens to the stock price.''

Chief Executive Officer Philip Schoonover was paid $8.52 million in fiscal 2006, including a salary of $975,000. He has not offered to work for less even though stock price has plumeted during his watch.

It’s cheering to know that capitalism is alive and well!

Ooh, look, Joan Walsh has discovered blogging!

She's all excited about her new blog, which conveniently links right from Salon's front page.

From one post:

But we know some blogs are good, and my goal is to make sure mine is one of them. For now, blogs are a tool. When we invent a better tool, they'll be eclipsed. Of course they're perfect for Web publishing, where everything we do is a first draft; they're perfect for our sped-up news cycle as well...

Later, in the same post:

Maybe most interesting, blogs foster a two-way conversation that I'm looking forward to, and I trust our amazing readers to do their part.

Anyone see any irony here? Now that they've killed the Salon blogs, Joanie discovers how worthwhile and useful blogging can be.

Anyone?

Anyone?

Bueller?

In unrelated news, our old friend Nancy, who ran Now You Listen Here, has moved her blog here.

http://milife.wordpress.com/

She's even got a picture of the Alien up, for your oohing and aahing pleasure.

Harvard University Blogs switched from RadioManila to WordPress

I learned from Yule Heibel's blog that Harvard has made a 'bulk switch' for all its bloggers from Manila, the 'corporate' version of Radio Userland, to WordPress, and that the transition went quite smoothly. If Salon is determined to switch from Radio, maybe Harvard can tell them how to make it simple for all of us. Scott?

Neva Feva goes National

Hey, everyone! I'm not a regular listener of NPR and the business breakdown Marketplace, but tonight I was driving home from a client's and just happened to have it on. Imagine my surprise when I heard the name "Neva C____o"! She was interviewed in a segment on identity theft, and spoke with seemingly effortless aplomb. Hear it here.

What Makes (Made) Salon Bloggers a Community?

If we're going to keep the Salon Blog mojo/jive alive, here, somewhere, or virtually, we need to answer this question. What I love(d) about Sloggers was:

• manageable size, so we were familiar to each other, helped each other out, regularly read each others' posts etc. -- that's what made it a community, a group of friends
• no dominance -- it was a group without a hierarchy, jealousy, any of the other things that make some groups unpleasant to belong to
• shared political worldview, but with a lot of personal commentary as well, so we really got to know each other
• the cachet of being associated with Salon.com, despite the fact they treated us like shit
  
• the sense of fun -- from Raven's goofy posts to VO madness to Birdie's wacky virtual parties

This was unique, to my knowledge. If there were other similar communities, they must have had some other 'gel' that got them and kept them together, though I don't know what it was. Some of the more 'social' blog tools oriented towards younger people have tools to help you 'find' like minds and set up virtual communities with them. Now, there's Zaadz, which is really worth a look -- kinda what Salon Blogs was aiming to be, though a bit less political, and with an amazing 2500 active members. Can we learn from them? Should we join them? What else was keeping us together in Salon Blogs that we don't want to lose? What was it that really made us a community?

Renewal & Aristocrats

A bit of positive news for those who prefer to stay at Salon. I just heard from Birdie at Beauty Dish. Her subscription was up for renewal, and she completed it successfully yesterday. So apparently you can still extend.

And now that I have done my community service, I'd like to announce the new group blog started by hilarious former Salon Blogger Katy Hipke and myself. It's called The Aristocrats, and it's chock full of natural goodness.

Breakdown

I'm not sure where else to post this, so I'll do it here. I'm relocating, probably permanently, to toomuchbluesky.blogspot.com. Both our Mac (which housed all of the Radio crap) and my laptop broke down in a space of two weeks. I'm using a borrowed laptop from work to type this, and I don't feel like going through the trouble of reloading Radio on a computer that isn't even mine. And with the uncertain future of the Salon blogs, it doesn't seem worth it. So the old blog is done.

More details at the aforementioned location.

BTW - how hard is it really to reload Radio? I don't even know my password, so I'm not sure how I would be able to prove that I'm the legitimate owner.