In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19960829150129.0baf1466@mail.visi.net>
Message-ID: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-online-news@marketplace.com
Precedence: bulk
Status: RO
X-Status: 

I heartily agree that doing a good job more quickly and less expensively
is the test to use.  Will division of labor ALWAYS do this?  History and
experience say, no, not ALWAYS.  The optimal division of newsroom labor in
1900 or 1950 may not be optimal in 1996.  I suspect it is not.  There are
strong political motives within the profession that would wish to counter
my observation on this point.  We have seen evidence of that here.  

Properly sizing the workforce in any given production formula is
a matter of economic sound sense, not a matter of morals.   

other comments below......

On Thu, 29 Aug 1996, Don 'DocDon' Taylor wrote:

>     While I don't want to become deeply involved in this two-fisted
> saga, there is a simple economics test for this whole question. What's
> wrong with that approach?
> 
>     Test:  Who can do the job more quickly and less expensively?
> 
>     While this may not give credit to the total skills of the individual
> worker, the objective of the team is to win the game, while enjoying
> playing, in the least number of innings. If a writer has multiple
> deadlines and is well paid, he/she ought to stay away from wasting
> precious, limited time fiddling around formatting things that can
> be done more quickly and less expensively by someone else.

Can it be done more quickly and less expensively by interposing a strata
of "someone elses"?  That is the issue.  

>     Division of labor is old-fashioned but still often makes economic
> sense, even when it isn't exactly labor.
> 
 As an economic concept, division of labor is hardly obsolete....I
certainly did not say that.  I said, that the PARTICULAR division of labor
frequently seen in journalistic organizations, is optimized for a
different time, different media, different technology.  Certainly, we have
seen examples of this across a wide range of industry in the past 25
years.  It seems most unlikely that the newspaper publishing industry
would be exempt from the forces moving the rest of industry.  


+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
This message was posted to ONLINE-NEWS. http://www.planetarynews.com/o-n.html

From owner-online-news@marketplace.com Thu Aug 29 22:35:45 1996
Received: from marketplace.com (marketplace.com [206.168.5.232]) by cnj.digex.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id WAA18084 ; for ; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 22:35:44 -0400
Received: (from majordom@localhost) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id RAA12335 for online-news-outgoing; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 17:45:14 -0600
Received: from server.indra.com (server.indra.com [204.144.142.2]) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id RAA12327 for ; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 17:45:08 -0600
Received: from indra.com by server.indra.com (8.7.4/Spike-8-1.0)
	id RAA01895; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 17:34:28 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from andorra.it.earthlink.net by indra.com (8.7.4/Spike-8-1.0)
	id RAA02846; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 17:34:24 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from [153.37.124.214] (pool022.Max9.San-Francisco2.CA.DYNIP.ALTER.NET [153.37.124.214]) by andorra.it.earthlink.net (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id PAA06705; Thu, 29 Aug 1996 15:06:38 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: Steve Outing , online-news@planetarynews.com