www.midatlanticcma.org

March 2014 M.A.C.M.A.

TO EXCHANGE IDEAS, ASSIST EACH OTHER, GET BETTER ACQUAINTED

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MACMA State Directors:

North Carolina

David Adams

Kevin Craig

South Carolina

Barbara West-Ravenall

Crystal Mattress

Virginia

Ed Barlow

Stephanie Eubanks

Angela Campbell

Dear MACMA Colleague:

What an exciting time to be involved in this industry and what an exciting

time to be honored and chosen to lead this fine organization.

Over the past several months I have heard over and over that Circulation is

the “Make It Happen” Department. We are the ones that make it happen

every day and make it work. And we are the ones that need to lead the

revolution from simply to circulating to building audience. No longer are

we the department that simply drives the white vans and drops bundles of

newspapers. While that is still an important part of what we do each and

every day our piece of the puzzle has grown tremendously. Circulation

departments must now transform themselves into Audience Development

departments and become a marketing-driven organization to achieve the

goals set forth in today’s news economic environment.

Now more than ever MACMA needs to play a bigger role in helping its’

members exchange ideas, get better acquainted, and assist each other.

While it may seem like a big lonely world sometimes we are all in this fight

together. And together we can pave a new road that helps us get to victory

lane. We can’t do that without your membership renewal and conference

attendance.

The book is unwritten. The blank pages are there. It’s up to us to tell the

story. Stand up and help continue the transition at your organization. No

one knows how this story will end however we can control what this chapter

will say. Together let’s make it a good one.

Thank you for working hard every day. Thank you for realizing that it is in

your best interest and the interest of your franchise to take time out of your

extremely busy schedule to stay involved with MACMA and to attend the

MACMA training sessions and conferences. And thank you for your

confidence in allowing me to lead this organization. I’m excited to continue

to guide us through the next laps and will do my best to make sure all of us

are successful.

As always I’m just an e-mail or phone call away…….

Best regards,

Todd

Todd Benz

tbenz@thetimesnews.com

336-506-3020

Executive Committee

President: Todd Benz

The Times-News Burlington, NC

tbenz@thetimesnews.com

1st Vice President: Matthew Wolfe

The Times News Burlington, NC

mwolfe@thetimesnews.com

2nd Vice President: Robyn Ashley

The News & Observer Charlotte, NC

rashley@

Secretary: Kevin Zepezauer

Fayetteville Observer Fayetteville, NC

russelld@fayobserver.com

Treasurer: Sheila Meadows

The Sun Journal New Bern, NC

smeadows@freedomenc.com

Todd Benz

MACMA President

2013-2014

FROM THE PRESIDENT…

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5 qualities of innovative leaders in today’s media

by Tom RosenstielPublished May 3, 2013 8:46 am Updated May 3, 2013 11:25 am

In “The Boys on the Bus,” Timothy Crouse’s fabled book about the press and the 1972 presidential campaign, Jim Naughton was the quiet and contemplative New York Times reporter who toiled alongside the outsized and flamboyant Johnny Apple.

After he left The Times 1977, Naughton became known to another two generations of journalists as a manager and leader — first as a top editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer in its ascent to becoming one of the country’s great papers, and later as president of the Poynter Institute. (Poynter’s annual Leadership Academy, one of its signature events, begins each year with a lecture in Naughton’s name.)

Naughton, who passed away last year, led in a style ahead of his time — by listening, shielding creative people from bureaucracy, pushing power down and more — concepts better recognized today for their value than when Naughton subtly advanced them.

What qualities distinguish successful leaders in media today?

I see five qualities common among the current crop of innovators — at a time when it’s perhaps even harder to lead, given all the challenges the industry faces. As I distilled these qualities, I also realized they are distinctly Naughtonian.

Innovators run at what is growing.

The strongest pull in the news industry, as in any disrupted business, can be to preserve the part of the business that, though shrinking, provides the biggest share of revenue. Innovators, such Clark Gilbert at Deseret Media, know this is a seductive mistake and focusing most of your energy on preserving what is shrinking is a strategy for slow death.

The innovators I see behave differently. While they work to preserve the legacy, they focus more energy on the part of their business that is growing, even if it’s small. They work on how to create the space and the forgiveness in the company to do that.

Focusing on growth, rather than on slowing decline, is hard. It means innovating rather than reacting. But if you don’t focus on growth, you’re hoping someone else will invent the future while you tread water. In your market, that someone may well be an organization providing services to businesses that don’t subsidize journalism.

Successful innovators create a culture of optimism.

John Gardner, the extraordinary social innovator who created Common Cause, Civic Ventures and other programs, wrote about personal renewal, saying: “The future belongs to people who believe in the future.” Innovators, he also argued, needed to be hard-headed optimists who expected to fail and would not be daunted by it. These were people, Gardner said, who believed in a future others could not see.

Seeing around corners and having a vision you cannot prove, engenders doubters. Believing against the crowd requires armor. But in an era of disruption you cannot lead any other way. Who would want to follow a pessimist? To make other people invent the future, they have to believe you that it will be better.

In a disrupted industry, this is partly a matter of which way you want to look. Do you look back at what is not there anymore? Do you look at the fact that your newsroom has shrunk 30 percent and bemoan what you cannot do?

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Or do you look forward and see the possibilities? We now can more easily tap the expertise of our community to inform our work and engage in a more robust discussion of the news. Optimists see technology as an opportunity. So do those who will exploit technology to shape the future.

Those who see technology as only disruption will be overrun by it.

Innovators lead with a garage mentality.

In Philadelphia, Naughton barely had a budget for foreign news. Yet he and editor Gene Roberts kept the gifted Richard Ben Cramer in the Middle East with funds earmarked for building maintenance — among other items. Cramer won a Pulitzer for his trouble.

Leaders find ways to try, not reasons to say no. They see obstacles as challenges to work around and crises as opportunities. I have come across executives who have asked for demotions so they could have the freedom to experiment; others have found ways to get budget forgiveness in their companies to buy themselves time. They have tried ideas others said would never work (but that no one had tried) and tried them figuring they would learn no matter what. These types of leaders find a way.

Successful leaders also believe that the only way to succeed is to fail, that failing is how you learn and innovate. Robyn Tomlin, who is editor of Digital First Media’s Project Thunderdome, shared this message with me when we met during a leadership conference: She would fail and learn and fail and eventually succeed. It was one of the first messages she heard from CEO John Paton and executive editor Jim Brady. It liberated her.

Twitter was born out of the failure of a podcasting company called Odeo. The New York Times would probably never have created its metered pay model had it not failed with and learned from Times Select. You can’t afford to fail? No, you can’t afford not to.

Innovators look further down the road.

Unafraid to fail, using guerrilla tactics to succeed, innovators also operate with their heads up so they can see further out and around. They are not just focused on the next quarter or the next year. They are not just looking within the news industry for answers. (Gilbert in Deseret benchmarks various different companies, only three of which are traditional media, and adapted his social-media strategy from a Brazilian airline. Steve Jobs looked everywhere for inspiration, far afield from technology.)

Innovators also recognize that they don’t know everything. So they lead as much by listening as by teaching. (Naughton, again, disbanded the morning planning meeting by editors at the Inquirer, believing reporters calling in were better able to determine what should be in the next day’s paper.) This is a more modern kind of leadership, one that is absorbing and learning. It is a kind of leadership that believes leading is more than just repeating yourself.

Innovators know the essentials that should not change.

Peter Drucker, the management theorist whose ideas never seem to age, said the organizations that adapt best to a changing world know first and foremost what they should not abandon.

For any institution, that essential purpose is “the value you provide” to your various customers. In news, this starts with readers, viewers and listeners, but every business has many different kinds of customers. Your value is not what you do — your practices and routines — but the value you provide to people’s lives. Knowing your value — the essential service you provide — is the difference between being in the transportation business rather than the railroad business. But it’s also a matter of institutional values. Many in news confuse values with practices. I have also met executives who are giving up on what distinguishes journalism from all other media.

If the future belongs to those who believe in the future, it seems just as clear that the future of journalism will belong to those who believe in journalism.

Tom Rosenstiel, the executive director of the American Press Institute, is an author, journalist, researcher and a member of Poynter’s National Advisory Board. You can follow him on Twitter at tbr1.

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ZINSERGRAM aka Legal Update By L. Michael Zinser ~ The Zinser Law Firm

GRIFFIN APPROVED AS NLRB GENERAL COUNSEL

On October 29, 2013, by a vote of 55 to 44, the U.S Senate approved the nomination of Richard Griffin to be General Counsel

of the National Labor Relations Board. Griffin’s nomination was controversial – for good reason. Before he was approved as NLRB

General Counsel, he had recently been one of President Obama’s unconstitutional recess appointees.

Prior to his recess appointment to the NLRB, Griffin was General Counsel to the International Union of Operating Engineers.

Currently, he is also a named defendant in a lawsuit in California, wherein both he and the union are accused of RICO violations.

Griffin’s nomination was clearly part of the administration’s longstanding attitude of, “We are going to do what we want, try to stop us

if you can!”

After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Obama’s recess appointees to be unconstitutional, Republican

members of the U.S. Senate blocked Griffin’s nomination to the NLRB. Figuratively giving the Senate “the finger,” President Obama

then nominated Griffin to be NLRB General Counsel. Unfortunately, by a vote of 62 to 37, enough Republican Senators broke ranks on

October 28, 2013 to stop the filibuster of Griffin’s nomination.

This nomination’s approval comes none too soon for the administration. Just last month, the U.S. District Court for the Western

District of Washington dismissed an NLRB 10(j) injunctive relief case against an Employer. In dismissing the case, the Court ruled that

the NRLB did not have authority to bring the lawsuit because, under the so-called Federal Vacancies Reform Act, Acting General

Counsel Lafe Solomon was not validly appointed to that role.

Solomon had been “Acting” for over two and a half years, and there was no way he would have ever been confirmed by the

U.S. Senate. You will remember that Solomon is the person who prosecuted Boeing for opening a plant in South Carolina. However,

newly confirmed General Counsel Griffin is expected to be just as unabashedly pro-union as Solomon. The NLRB General Counsel post

is a very powerful position, as the General Counsel decides which cases are to be prosecuted.

NLRB ALJ UPHOLDS REGISTER-GUARD DECISION

On October 24, 2013, NLRB ALJ Paul Bogas ruled that Purple Communications, Inc. could lawfully enforce its e-mail policy.

That policy prohibits employees’ use of Company equipment, including computers, Internet, and e-mail systems, for anything other than

business purposes. The employees are prohibited from exchanging e-mails with individuals who have no professional or business

affiliation with the Company.

The NLRB General Counsel argued that the Judge should overrule the NLRB’s 2007 Register-Guard Decision. That Decision

held that employees have no right under the National Labor Relations Act to use their Employer’s e-mail system for union organizing

purposes. The NLRB General Counsel said Register-Guard should be overruled because of the increased importance of e-mail as a

method of communication.

Upholding the Company’s policy, ALJ Bogas stated that he was bound by Register-Guard, and that only the NLRB could

overrule it. (Editor’s Note: The Zinser Law Firm, P.C., represented Register-Guard in the 2007 NLRB case.)

The NLRB is looking for the right case to try to overrule Register-Guard. All NLRB Regional Offices have been directed to

send any new unfair labor practice charges implicating e-mail issues to the NLRB’s Division of Advice in Washington, D.C.

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NLRB MEMBER KENT HIROZAWA PREDICTS THE FUTURE

Newly appointed NLRB Board Member Kent Hirozawa gave a peak at the Board’s agenda in his speech on October 30, 2013 in

New York City. He stated that NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce is likely to engage in the rulemaking process.

Previously, the NLRB has attempted to impose new rules requiring notice-posting in the workplace and “quickie elections.”

Those rules have been found to be unconstitutional by the courts, and they are further complicated by the fact that unconstitutional

recess appointees imposed the rules. Now, with a confirmed Board of five members, Chairman Pearce is likely to revisit both of those

issues.

Hirozawa also stated that the NLRB will continue to pursue and attack Employers’ handbook rules and policies, including the

at-will doctrine, off-duty access to the Employer’s premises, social media, and confidentiality.

Warning: All Employers should expect an active and unfriendly NLRB in 2014.

COURT SMACKS DOWN EEOC FOR ARROGANCE

The EEOC filed suit against Bass Pro Outdoor World, alleging Title VII violations. In its defense, Bass Pro claimed that the

EEOC did not “endeavor to eliminate any such alleged unlawful employment practice by informal methods of conference, conciliation,

and persuasion.” The EEOC, however, claimed sovereign immunity and that its actions were not reviewable in court.

The District Court disagreed with the EEOC, noting that the lower courts remain free to scrutinize the EEOC’s conciliation

attempts. In addressing the sovereign immunity claim, the Court stated, “That cannot be right. Not only does the EEOC misapprehend

[the test], it misunderstands ‘relief.’”

Admonishing the EEOC, the Court stated:

It would make little sense for Congress to impose certain conditions precedent on the EEOC’s authority to bring suit if the

EEOC could just turn around and claim sovereign immunity from judicial enforcement of that condition.

In dismissing the EEOC’s claims, the Court noted, “In support of its unusual argument, the EEOC has not cited any case in

which a statutorily prescribed precondition to suit was found unreviewable. Instead, it relies on the legislative history to Title VII…” It

continued, “The EEOC thus essentially uses the minority opinion in Congress – on an issue not even identical to the one in dispute here,

to support the argument it urges this Court to adopt. The Court is not convinced.”

This is yet another case where the EEOC engaged in a frivolous action against an Employer.

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