In the turmoil at the Times, there's a broader implication: organizations are becoming harder to run. The phone, and email, have given managers the illusion that they can control far-flung empires. But modern communications, and the growth of weblogs and web bulletin boards in particular, have also given power to bitter employees. Think of it as the proliferation of weapons to organizational terrorists. [See the story below on the role of the web in Howell Raines' fall.]
Let's face it: most people are disaffected. They're paid too little, promoted too slowly, passed over, humiliated. They haven't realized their dreams, and they blame everyone around them, and above them in particular. Apart from conservative opportunists, who wanted Raines out of the Times? Duh. The old farts who'd lost out to him in the power struggle, the pedestrian reporters who resented the paper's cult of soaring writing, and those whose metabolisms would never achieve the speed Raines wanted.
He'd lost the confidence of the newsroom? As if the happiness of the workers is far more important than the satisfaction of the readers. Give me a break. Raines, sometimes crassly, was trying to institute change; the organizational reactionaries didn't like it. In a previous era, a manager would have been able to execute the ringleaders, and ride out the discontent. But Raines was up against a powerful combination of old labor unionism, and the new industrial action: a leak to a weblog, tittle-tattle over the IM, whispered conversations to Howard Kurtz.
The Times is obviously a special case, of particular interest to the media, and to the libertarians who dominate web political commentary. But any technology company, one that has dealt with the bulletin boards of Fucked Company, knows what Raines was up against. Asymmetric warfare has come to the workplace: managers may sometimes have the power to hire and fire, but the peasants have the internet now.
Is that a good thing? I'm not sure. I can imagine large organizations -- all large organizations -- becoming more conservative, so concerned to maintain a happy workplace that they avoid change. For smaller organizations, in the media and other sectors, this may be an opportunity. Information Superhighway Carried Raines to His Exit [LA Times]
