Posts by Bart Janssen
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Wow that document reads like it was written by thoughtful, intelligent, experienced educators who consulted widely before coming up with the policy!
Oh and I went to Green Bay High School when it was uniform-free. None of the claims made about lack of uniforms in schools were apparent to me in the time I went there. Frankly as far as I can tell most folks have been conned into paying the uniform industry relatively large amounts of money for no benefit to their children. But that was merely my experience.
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Hard News: Campbell interviewed, in reply to BenWilson,
for all the complaint that management don’t know about the coalface, there is a dearth of people at the coalface who are actually prepared to stand up and become managers.
While to be fair my rant was not entirely clear - that isn't the point I was making.
Absolutely management is a skill and talented managers are valuable.
BUT
There is no reason why managers should always be at the top of the salary and decision making pyramid (or even that it be a pyramid at all).
Why do we insist that managers make all the decisions? In very many cases they are least equiped to make the decision. Mark Weldon knows F all about journalism but he clearly was making a decision about what kind of journalism was good for mediaworks ... because he is the manager.
That is an appallingly stupid situation and one that is replicated all over New Zealand.
Even worse we actually have a small pool of quality managers in NZ to pull from so most organisations make do with very average managers ... and devolve all their decision making to those managers?!?!?!?
As a consequence decision making in NZ organisations is almost always risk averse and dogma derived. It's unusual for it to be a catastrophically bad as at mediaworks (and I will stand by the bet that they will fail badly as a result of this decision) but it is mostly not what organisations really need in order to succeed.
Should management be rewarded? Sure.
Should it be rewarded more than what it is most time (doing chores)? No.
Should they be rewarded more than the experts they manage? Hell no (unless they really are exceptional). -
Hard News: Campbell interviewed, in reply to Stephen Judd,
good management is a thing
Yup indeed. And rare.
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Hard News: Campbell interviewed, in reply to NBH,
there is an unfortunate tendency in a lot of professions to denigrate management and assume that it’s something that anyone can do. That’s absolutely not true at all, and in some areas the sort of qualities that professional success rewards or selects for are not those that will make for good managers
A very good point. I'm a crap manager, some of the reasons for that are the same things that make me good at my job.
But there is still no reason why the person employed to do those tasks I am crap at should be allowed ALL the control and be paid 6 times my salary!
I think there is a place for managers in any organistaion, but it is NOT at the top of the pyramid. They have skills that are useful. We don't let the folks in stores decide our research directions so why should we let the managers decide research directions.
Same in the media, there is no reason why Weldon and Christie should decide what journalists should work on nor what a current affairs program should focus on - they have NO skills that allow them to make intelligent decisions about that. Yet that is precisely what has happened.
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Hard News: Campbell interviewed, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Education is in the same boat. So is health.
Absolutely. The list of professions where the highly trained knowledgeable and skilled professionals are managed by twatcocks with an MBA are alarmingly long.
The same applies just as well to the trades where the best way to make money as a tradesman is to stop actually doing the work yourself.
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Hard News: Campbell interviewed, in reply to Russell Brown,
And more on the existential anxiety in the journalism trade by Deborah Hill Cone.
As I read that it made me grumpy, "How could she complain when it is the journalists themselves who gave up the power".
But she is in exactly the same place as most scientists now. Like journalism, my own profession is owned and run by white male managers who neither understand nor care about what is done "at the coalface". Their last job was selling a sharemarket or selling milk powder to the Japanese - their next job could be anything so long as the remuneration package is better.
Somehow we have all collectively decided that managers are somehow mystical beings who deserve more money and absolute power over our lives. Most times we have vastly more knowledge and experience than they - yet they make the decisions.
We've all chosen to hand over control of our lives to MBAs in suits and there is no evidence that our lives are better for it.
It's hard to be critical of DHC when my own profession is in exactly the same situation.
Yet I think we still need journalists (and scientists, but I would say that). I think somehow there has to be a way that a journalist can make a living without the vast share of the money being earned by their efforts going into the hands of someone who's only interest is buying a new suit.
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Hard News: Campbell Live: A Disturbance…, in reply to izogi,
I’m struggling to see it actually happening, though.
It would be a supreme irony to have 7-sharp replaced by John Campbell.
But that would require someone at TVNZ to admit they got it wrong with Hosking.
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Hard News: Campbell Live: A Disturbance…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
And go where?
Simple.
Don’t watch telly.
You missed the point, Amanda was asking where would the journalists who left TV3 go.
This is a perennial problem with jobs in New Zealand, particularly in specialised fields. There really are only a few employers for talented journalists/camera operators/editors. This means those employers have tremendous power over those staff. Don't like being told to report on silly puff pieces about the PM and told to ignore corruption on high ... then go find another job ... oh there isn't one in NZ ... guess you'll do whatever the boss says then and be grat5eful you still have a job.
So folks are faced with leaving NZ or working under conditions that most normal people would consider intolerable.
It's the other end of the same scale that CampbellLive itself reported on, people at the bottom with no option but to take on more hours at minimum wage and employers with all the power.
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I'm going to abuse this space with my two celebrity sightings of JC.
First was one morning after I'd dropped the car off for a service and was riding up the hill past TV3. It was a beautiful day and I was just enjoying the freedom of riding. Mr Campbell was walking down the footpath and congratulated me for doing so well riding up that steep hill - I just wish I'd been brave enough to stop and chat - I also wish he'd pointed out I'd left my helmet in the car, 10 minutes later I was riding up that hill a second time with my helmet on, a little less energetically.
Second was a few weeks ago after the news of the review had come out, he was having dinner at Cocoro with friends. He may not have the job we appreciate him for any more but I'm betting he will have many friends around him with which to have more dinners.
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I've been reading more than few comments about how quality journalism is not Mediaworks' problem. It isn't their fault that CampbellLive was the only surviving TV journalism and they were merely making the correct commercial decision.
Which sounds fine until you realise two things:
The first is that while CampbellLive has had its ups and downs in the ratings it has always been one of the better rating programs on TV3. Arguing that it's only a commercial decision ignores that commercially its actually a pretty terrible call. If it was my money I'd be pretty pissed off with the managers who made the call.And second those managers at TV3 are pretty confident that they haven't pissed off a huge part of their audience. Frankly I think that confidence is misplaced. There are a lot of households that are going to turn away from TV3 simply because of this decision and they may never come back. People can be really perverse - they may really like "Dancing with the D-List" but may choose not to watch just for the pleasure of giving the finger to Christie and Weldon.