It is one of the great ironies of the journalism business that those institutions which have pledged to stick up for the little guy and uncover the truth behind the doubletalk — and I’m talking about America’s newspapers here — usually do exactly that unless their own employees are involved. In that case, doubletalk and sticking it to the little guy are everyday occurrences.

Case in point: The News & Observer’s recent announcement to its staff that free delivery of the paper to employees’ homes will end Dec. 31 so that the N&O can be brought “into line with what has become standard practice in our industry.”

The fact that such a move could also add as much as $119 per employee to the N&O’s bottom line somehow wasn’t included in the announcement. Considering there are something in the neighborhood of 1,000 employees at the paper, that could be a nifty six-figure windfall for the company. You gotta love those industry standards.

Here’s how it works to the N&O’s benefit: The people who throw the papers onto driveways all over Raleigh and the surrounding patch of central North Carolina are compensated on a per-paper basis. Let’s call it a dime for every toss (and that number doesn’t come out of thin air). Every year, then, the N&O pays about $36.50 per employee to deliver the paper, which means there will be an immediate savings of $36,000 or so right there. On top of that, if every staffer agrees to pay the special employee price of $82.50 a year for home delivery, there’s $82,000 in additional revenue. Overnight, what was once a benefit to staffers becomes a revenue stream.

It’s understandable, of course, that the N&O would want to turn the outflow of money into an inflow. Times are tough in the newspaper industry these days, and pennies are being pinched in countless ways. But instead of simply acknowledging this undeniable reality, the N&O’s overlords portray it to the staff as a move to get in step with industry standards — as if the paper was in danger of losing its certification as a truth-guarding member of the Fourth Estate if it didn’t cut off this employee freebie.

Yeah, it’s an industry standard, all right — if your industry happens to be rhetorical fog.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 1:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.