Will this help or hurt?

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Permalink Reply by Michael Turro on October 2, 2008 at 9:58am

Help or hurt what? If you're talking about your company's profile I can't see it hurting. Sure it's not the best thing in the world to be seen as the blade of the axe, but it's an axe that's going to fall anyway. It's just a sad fact that publishing organizations are shrinking dramatically - nostalgia can't and won't save save anybody. It's either lose X jobs today or all jobs tomorrow.

If you're talking about helping or hurting the paper in question that's tough for an outsider to answer. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they did their due diligence and made this decision after careful thought and proper planning. That being said - I can also imagine this being a panic move that will only hasten the inevitable.

Either way it's not a bad thing for Woodwing to be seen as an instrument of efficiency and automation.

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Becker on October 2, 2008 at 10:12am

See my reply to David.

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Permalink Reply by David Willson on October 2, 2008 at 9:59am

In America, Woodwing would be thrilled with this story because it clearly illustrates solid cost-savings to publishing businesses who implement their product. Virtually every family in America has someone who is self employed or involved in entrepreneurial business. It's our culture. The profit motive is something that we all understand, whether we like the jobs implication or not. So it would not be a terrible negative to have this story appear in the mainstream news here.

Just by reading the slant of the article, you can tell the cultural differences across the pond however. I'm guessing the culture of organized labor is thoroughly entrenched in the UK, and anything that inherently costs jobs will be considered quite heinous by many. Still, Woodwing's customers are not Earl and Edna England, they are managing editors, publishers and their CFOs. I think they are probably looking quite favorably on the article even in the UK.

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Becker on October 2, 2008 at 10:12am

Thank you for your insight.

Check out this response....

http://www.anorak.co.uk/tabloids/189769.html

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Permalink Reply by David Willson on October 2, 2008 at 10:18am

Yeah, there are hundreds of blogs like this, started by journalists who got sacked or are generally disgruntled with their "big corporate" employers. It is what it is. They are not Woodwing's customers.

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Permalink Reply by David Cardillo on October 2, 2008 at 11:43am

What took them so long?

a related anecdote: my sister formerly worked for a wire service. At a meeting she suggested they look to new business models, because the old ones were dying (they were hemorrhaging business). She told them to abandon (or at least cease to support) the old model, and the reply was, "but that's where we get 80% of our business!"

She demurred, but the correct response should have been, "and how's business lately?" Pardon the mixed metaphor, but that's like saying you're a vacuum tube repair man - though you only fix one or two a year, you won't abandon it because it's 80% of your income.

How long has it been since newspapers (or any publication) began scripting and automating their workflows? One AppleScript and a drop folder can do the work of 25 full-time people (with no graveyard shift). That's what computers do - catalog, find and do repetitive tasks far faster and more efficiently than a significant number of humans. Frankly, I'm surprised that any modern publication has taken this long to find a workflow solution.

Am I concerned about being scripted or automated out of a job? Not really. Someone needs to watch the machine to make sure it's functioning properly. And there are still a great many things that need a discerning (human) intellect - that's why there's no truly automated solution for knocking figures out of their backgrounds, for instance. It would behoove anyone to learn how to build or maintain the machines that someday may be doing their job.

Ask auto workers how they feel about being automated out of a job. Watch an episode of "How It's Made" and note that all of those fancy machines are doing work that was very recently being done by hand on an assembly line - and that some, because of the nature of the work, are still done by human hands. Ask anyone who produces, say, a car parts catalog and ask them why they haven't yet scripted the collecting of parts numbers, images and descriptions from separate databases and automatically styling them in a layout.

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Becker on October 2, 2008 at 12:52pm

Being from SE Michigan, and still working/living here, I love the auto industry reference.
Thank you for your input.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Michem on October 4, 2008 at 4:14pm

It see to me that certain people are forgetting what created the press in American. "The First Amendment"! They seem to be more concern with making money, and cutting corners. With out a strong editorial product, your mag (or newspaper) with not survive, no matter how much money you are making.

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