Cooperatives and Unionization in Publishing

 IS CONFLICT AT CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE AN ANOMALY?

Recently I covered here the Nathan J. Robinson fiasco, when he fired his entire staff at Current Affairs magazine, a "leftist" publication, when said staff pushed to turn the project into a co-op.

ARE THERE historical precedents for this?

Yes. Prominent among them was the situation in 1981 with the UK's Time Out magazine, when employees went on strike, due to publisher Tony Elliott changing the previous equal-pay-for-everyone policy of the magazine, in order to pay more to talented outside writers. 

The publication had been started by Elliott in 1968 as a modest alternative pamphlet, apparently with a collective decision-making process, which Elliott abruptly voided, in much the same way Nathan Robinson behaved a few weeks ago in this country.

WHAT HAPPENED?

What resulted in the 1981 situation, after Time Out shut down for a few months, was most of the former staff at the magazine forming their own similar listings publication called City Limits. Simultaneous with this, opportunistic mogul Richard Branson geared up his own listings magazine, Event, and Tony Elliott restarted Time Out with a new staff.

THE QUESTION OF VALUE: A TEST CASE?

What we saw with the Time Out mess was a possible answer to the question: from where does economic value actually come? The visionary? The workers?

The wikipedia entry on Time Out credits the initial success of the magazine not to Tony Elliott, but its designer, Pearce Marchbank: 

The flavour of the magazine was almost wholly the responsibility of its designer, Pearce Marchbank. . . .

During the strike, Branson poached Marchbank and made him co-editor of Event, surrounding him with the best literary and journalistic talents money could buy, and backed the project with ample funds-- more than a million pounds by some reports. Despite this, Event soon folded.

City Limits started out well but quickly plateaued, while Time Out eventually surged ahead. Time Out of course had the advantage of being in London an already-established name. A "brand." One has to also consider the extent to which Tony Elliott was by then himself an established brand.

City Limits lasted until 1993. 

DISCLAIMER

I was myself part of a literary cooperative, from 2000 to roughly 2009, and have many thoughts on the experience, which I may express sometime in a different post.